My one night encounter with the Buddha

My one night encounter with the Buddha

               I had just finished an exasperating (but well worth it) purge in my bathroom toilette. It was after a night out on the town. One of those nights that you’d swear are unforgettable – but because of the alcohol a lot of memory is fuzzy. It was unusually warm that night and not having to worry about the weather added to the buzz. We loaded ourselves up generously before going out. I had just moved into a new chic apartment downtown with inside brick and it wouldn’t be far to walk. We saw usual faces, a girl flashed us for shots, I danced with a girl I liked and we made-out on the dancefloor, someone insulted and attacked my friend – but he fended himself off well, which we celebrated with more shots.

               Towards the end of the night, we ran into a couple of good friends, one of whom had something for me. I had forgotten that I was supposed to pick the package up from him earlier in the week. Now I stood before 4.5 dried grams of dried Psilocybe Cubensis. I stuffed them into my chest pocket as he hugged me and whispered, “safe travels, brother”. That’s quite a bit. I figured I’d wait for the right time. But after the usual shawarma and coke while walking home I somehow downed them without thinking about it. I don’t know what was going through my mind at the time. I guess I was avoiding that moment in the night when your buzz starts to wear off and there’s nothing left to look forward to. Little did I know I was in for the most intense psychedelic trip of my life.

               Usually, my trips are more cerebral and have to do with epiphanies about life or somatic blockages I need to work through but this journey was surprisingly different. This time the pre-flight anxiety was deep and I began to have intense problems expressing things in words. I had returned to my apartment but decided to go to the corner store to get some cigarettes. I approached the counter, asked for the usual, and looked in my wallet to find it empty (not unusual after a long night out). As I went to put my debit card and the pin into the card reader I realized I had no idea what numbers to press. The psychedelic experience seemed to be disengaging the logical part of my brain which usually reproduced numerical and other mechanical patterns.

               Amazed, a thought came to my head that the cashier would then be able to tell that I was so effed up I couldn’t even remember my pin. I looked up to try to explain my self and my jaw dropped in awe. My eyes beheld a brilliantly jeweled, thousand arm Hindu god – which one I can’t be sure because my knowledge of Hinduism at the time was not sufficient. The entire counter, wall of cigarettes, packages of gum, beef jerky, miscellaneous candies, Loto 649 case – it was all replaced by a dazzling shrine featuring this god. I put my debit card away, turned around, and walked right out the store. It was too much to handle. I later realized it happened to be a good thing that I had that vision – it stopped me from buying cigarettes. What a blessing!

               I walked back to my apartment as I realized the trip was intensifying. Rainbow colors, more vivid than I had ever hallucinated pulled at the fabric of space-time and flew across my visual field. The neurons in my brain must have been lit up and super-connected as I was having intense realizations related to the night. Like why do we poison ourselves and then stay up as long as possible and sleep in the next day and miss out on the real free energy of the sun? My brain was getting deep and philosophical and I couldn’t stop it. Next thing I remember I had to purge. I went into my bathroom and threw up and remember an idea come into my head as I looked at the swirl of color in the toilette that ‘that was God’. “That was God?” I said to myself as I flushed it into the nether.

               I, next, stood up, turned to face the mirror, and dropped my jaw again as I was staring straight into the eyes of, not myself, but the Buddha. A huge download hit me then and there. It seems that all the raw information from Buddhist texts I had been reading over the years finally coalesced into the transcendent epiphany. I realized the relationship between attachment and the ego (they are one and the same). And that attachment so often prevents us from attaining Buddha nature. I realized what a dream I'd been living all my life - the dream of the ego. And now I felt that I had woken up from that dream and realized that none of it really mattered. That's what made it a dream. I was amazed to find that there really was truth to the Buddhist philosophy I had been struggling with for so long. And, I concluded, the psychedelic medicine had helped me attain such a realization and glimpse this state of being.

This, in the psychedelic community, is what is referred to as a ‘download’ as within an instant a large amount of information with vast implications on my thought processes was received. I would never be the same. I stumbled to my bed and lay down. It was a lot to process. One last experience, however, was in store for me. Millions of years of evolution seemed to flash before my eyes. I may not have consciously been able to capture each image, but I remember then receiving another download – that we are the result of incarnations building upon the knowledge of each other and the reason why I inherently know things (how to eat, how to express myself, how to love, etc.) is due to this process of information gathering during evolution. This information is stored inside ourselves and not consciously accessible unless you attain subtle levels of awareness.

Then I had the best sleep of my life. Complete shut down. Not even a dream. A pure reboot. Thank you, medicine.