That Spring I cleared all the overgrowth and debris from the garden. The poppies bloomed at the same time and were not bothered by the rain. It seemed that life had found a rhythm, a normalcy.
I am sitting on the floor waiting to blast off. My destination is what my new friends call “the spaceship.” This is DMT, transcendence in a hot flash, five minutes into that other place and ten minutes for the journey back.
I barely know these people. I just met them a few weeks ago when an improbable mutual friend introduced us. This is only the second time we have hung out, but now they are about to chaperone my husband and I through our first and only DMT experience.
Before it was the subject of documentaries and discussed openly on podcasts and Reddit, DMT was the stuff of legend: an entheogen talked about in hushed circle, a badge of psychedelic honor for all who had tried it and came back to tell the tale. I believe you should try everything in life at least twice (since the first time is mostly nerves and uncertainty). Our new friends have only enough DMT left for my partner and I to go one time, so the pressure is on to do this right.
I hit the pipe; the DMT is harsh and hard to hold down even for a seasoned cigarette smoker like me. I get the hit down; my lungs are aching; the corners of the room begin to move like they are stuck in glue and I am pulling them toward me. I have not taken enough. I hit again, hold the smoke as long as I can, then collapse back onto the floor as the material realm collapses.
There is the sound of space/time being ripped open as I am shot through a tunnel of light to a place that is utterly foreign yet instantly familiar. It is a multidimensional realm of visual information and light. Before me is the jeweled-fractal veil that cross this space like an ER curtain. Many get lost here, caught in the trans-dimensional shimmering of informational objects, but I push through which requires the shredding of my corporeal body. Giant gears and lasers surround me and shred my body, then I am free to pass through.
Bringing back stories from this realm, from what I saw there, from the information that was downloaded to me, is a pointless endeavor. What I experienced there was intensely personal, unwinding like strands of DNA deep into my familial history, beyond the confines of language.
A few fragments from my journals of this time: A wolf the size of dragons, astral bodies of other travelers, the flash of a yellow figure in the room, my grandmother in the river of Gethsemane, cherub beings--one who pushes a shimmering multidimensional triangle of light into my chest before it goes, a fractal veil like a peacock tail, fractal realities cascading and colliding offering infinite variety and variation, calm/purpose, illusion, time does not exist, actual living Gods, love connects all beings in all realms of creation.
In Buddhism the Bardo is the realm that the dead enter after death—the same as purgatory to some Christians. It’s a waiting room where all that we lived is revealed and where Karma takes us to our next incarnation. In Buddhism, we remain in this place for 49 days. The enlightened, during the time, are able to learn great lessons so that they might have a more generous rebirth: 49 days the length of time between death and rebirth; 49 days the point in an embryo’s development where Buddhist believe we gain a soul; 49 days when sex is determined in embryonic development; 49 days when the pineal gland develops in the embryo’s brain.
Descartes hypothesized that the pineal gland is the “seat of the soul.” Modern science has discovered that DMT is produced by the pineal gland in the human brain. It is theorized that this substance is the root of both dreams and near death experiences. The pineal gland resembles an eye, and it located at the exact point of the “third eye” chakra—the point where many believe we access cosmic consciousness.
Another theory: When we die, the pinea
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