Part One

February's end, British Isles: the return of the light. Following three months of near-perpetual darkness, a miracle begins to manifest, as the days turn sharply bright, in the few precious hours around the middle of the day at least. Bright sun streams in through south-facing windows and broad glass doors, flooding living areas and bathing kitchens and bedrooms in the blessedness of renewal. All the while it belies the fact that the air outside remains ice-cold, the northerly wind stinging the face, chafing the hands, bringing blood from the lips.   

It was one such Saturday afternoon in 1975. The post delivered, lunch duly eaten, I was sitting quietly on my bed in the communal sleeping room. Then something happened. Unannounced, unpredicted, unexpected; out of nowhere, it seemed. And it changed everything.....

The events of the early afternoon are recorded with passable coherence in sections of my journal:

"....Yesterday something happened that had never happened before. Yesterday, twice, I became one with the rest of the universe. I died. Completely. The separate 'I' totally dissolved into the rest of the creation of the here and now. The Universal Godhead became manifest. That's another way of putting it."

"I just kind of slipped in. First me and the curtains became one, then the house on the other side of the street. Then I heard the song of a bird, and it became realised that this, sound, too, was part of this great one-ness. Then my body dissolved as a separate entity, then my separate mind...."  

"And the intuitive power, energy, of those few seconds was enormous, incredible. As if everything fitted together just perfectly, like a jigsaw puzzle, and my knowledge of this was perfect...."

And a little later:

"It happened again a couple of hours later, I lost my self in the room and floor and music, my body again disappeared, only this time it was a little less pure, a little more contrived. Like I decided to try to make it happen, and the next thing I knew it was happening, and there I was lying stretched across the floor, and it was happening...."

These are the attempts of a twenty-two year old seeker of truth to describe the indescribable, one afternoon after taking a tiny brown microdot; most likely the same tiny brown microdots that rained havoc on the Windsor festival the previous summer. 

I didn't really know how to react to all this. ".... The truth that was so obvious, that was staring us in the face all the time, but which we, by virtue of our separate egos, constantly denied. There wasn't really any reaction - no elation, no tears of joy, no fear, perhaps a little sense of relief...."

I was beyond reaction; in simple awe. These states of being - transcendent, non-dual, infinite, in contact with godhead and all creation - I knew to exist. However, the Buddhist texts and all that I had read left me with the impression that this was all far, far away. It would take lifetime upon lifetime of disciplined meditation and the rest to catch a glimpse of the ultimate nature of reality. All this had now been jettisoned, thanks to one tiny microdot of magical product. It was so dramatically different to everyday perception, yet so close - just around the corner. We were nearly there all the time; all it needed was the smallest tweak in consciousness. 

So strange, yet so - familiar. It was as if, somewhere, I had always known this truth. I had spent all my life to this point just waiting around, before it finally showed itself. The acid satori seemed so obvious, simply waiting for a chance to reveal itself. This was real; the rest was a fantasy, a fabrication, a dodgy dream. No wonder I felt relief. Now I could just get on with the rest of my life, do what I needed to do.

"And I only wish I could communicate this to the rest of the universe, go dancing down the streets, telling everybody that it's alright, and it always has been, and always will be, but I know that's no good...." 

Part Two

From then on, things were a little different. Whether it really marked a new direction or simply confirmed a path I'd been treading all my life was hard to tell (though I might well opt for the latter).

I felt sobered up. The little brown acid microdots - just four of them, taken at more-or-less monthly intervals - catalysed a series of initiations that spring, the acid satori being the first in a string of events which profoundly reshaped 'my' consciousness.

Through a combination of reading and intuition, I had hit upon the way to trip properly - at least, how 'tripping properly' was for me. Most people did it wrong, I felt. You don't walk and talk, you don't go to concerts or parties or play with balloons. No. Instead, you do - nothing. You sit still, having created conditions the best you can, and just wait. Like a supersonically-assisted meditation in openness.

I would seed the forthcoming trip with favourable feelings and attitudes. 'Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism' by Lama Govinda was a suitable text to read while awaiting the onset of the psychedelic. I didn't understand half of it, but the overall sense of numinous mysticism was perfect. Best of all, however, was the slim volume by Alexandra David-Neel entitled 'Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects'. The irony of the name was not lost on me: the teachings were hardly secret, since they were now there for the whole world to read; and they were no longer an oral transmission, as David-Neel had written them down. Nevertheless, this little book, penned by a a rare and courageous woman decades back, transmitted a good deal of profound metaphysical material, and was perfect launchpad preparation for the hours ahead.

As the trip built up and reached its crescendo, calm, stillness, silence were key. It was only when the effects were wearing off that carefully selected music came into its own. It helped to intensify and prolong the effects as the psychonaut traced the perilous and sometimes sad path back into heavy-duty dualistic experience. 

Part Three

I began making sketches of the progress of consciousness in these trips. From 'knower - knowing- known' (the everyday experience in dualism) through to simply 'Knowing' as a seamless experience without an object and a distinct onlooker.

On more than one occasion during that spring, time slowed down to a standstill. One Saturday afternoon in April I was sitting in the commune kitchen when, without prior warning, the world began to slow down to such a degree that I found myself bearing witness to its very creation. Things came into being, hung in a state of suspension for a moment, before dissolving back to the source, the source of all phenomena. Only to make way an infinite split-second later for the next wave of creation. In this way does 'the world' manifest; from a source, whence we derive our being, and to which we return on a moment-to-moment basis. In my journal notes, feeling the inadequacy of the spoken and written word, I could only refer to this source as the Universal Godhead.

To come face-to-face with the source of everything soon after your twenty-second birthday, and a few hours following delivering letters to the goodly folk of north Oxford, is not to be taken lightly. I was awed. "This is how it all works" a voice seemed to be saying. "It's not the way most people think at all. This is the basis of reality, and the root of magic. Catch that moment, as things come into being, and you can do anything. Absolutely anything."

It was just over a year since my psychedelic initiation in Bristol with Jimmy Keys and the burning cat. The intervening period had borne witness to a classic psychological death-and-rebirth experience. One year ago my old self, that phantom figure bursting with a thousand and one ideas about the world, had summarily collapsed before my very eyes. Now a new self, more aligned with direct experience of reality, was beginning to emerge.

Gone, also, was that sense of ontological meaninglessness which persisted in forming a backdrop to the earlier transformations. It was an absence  of meaning that arose from the former set of values dissolving, disappearing, but with no replacement to hand. The old games had been seen through, and a realignment awaited. Now, meaning was here in plenty, and the world came replete with beauty and metaphysical meaning, direction, and purpose.    

It was as if, during the course of these voyages fuelled by the tiny brown microdots, I was being shown different aspects of a basic template of how things really worked. Non-dual, subject and object as one;all phenomena as manifestations of, emanations from, source - or Source. Just glimpses, really, nothing more. Just enough to get it; just enough to orient myself in the direction I had always been going anyway. "There you are" the voice of these new dimensions seemed to be saying. "That's the way it is. Now go and do what you have to do." 

Footnotes: Music 

Of the many albums around at the time, one stood head and shoulders above all others as perfect for shaping and prolonging the latter stages of the cosmic trip. This was the newly-released 'Visions of the Emerald Beyond' performed by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. This album is a loud electric hymn to the divine, unique in the annals of music. Hindu bliss jazz-rock, supersonic and sensitive, otherworldy and right down-to-earth. It served me beautifully through the brown microdot spring, and again during the autumn of 1975.

'Oh Lord supreme supreme/ let me fulfil thy will' the chorus sways at the beginning, moving in rhythm with the music almost drunk on divine ecstasy. It synched perfectly with the sense of connection to Source, to Godhead, which now manifested in my life.

Listened to at high volume on headphones five hours into a potent trip, much of the music took the listener out, out, out, and beyond. It took a while to realise that much of the searing, soaring, swooping music was coming from a violin. John-Luc Ponty succeeded in extracting sounds from the instrument that nobody had done before. And the drums of Michael Walden rolled and roared with celestial thunder, taking us out of this world. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=440won1IOmM

The climax of the final track saw McLaughlin's jagged guitar ripping into the fabric of the cosmos, only to give up, and break out instead into pure electric melody, a miraculous ninety-second hymn to the eternal, inviting the listener - now a rapt devotee and lover - upwards and outwards, never to return. Puzzlingly for me, this track was 'On the Way Home to Earth'. For sure, it was a different Earth that the Mahavishnus envisaged to that in which most humans staggered around blindly.   

Footnotes: Alternative Society

It was a small yet significant minority of folk with vision and courage who set out to build an alternative to the 'establishment society', as we might have termed it, during the 1970s. That same pulse of inspired energy has resurfaced with a vengeance over the past two years. It has emerged, indeed, as a matter of urgency, of life and death, maybe quite literally.

There will be initiatives in countries all over the planet for sure; look out for them, seek them out. Here is one such in the UK, especially for Scotland. Highly recommended to search out these people and businesses, and use them as an alternative whenever possible to the cabal-connected bigwigs. Build up a new world for the future, based on love, intelligence, co-operation. Build back better - truly better, we need 'better' like never before. Not the 'build back better'of the political slaves and stooges, which is a thin and pathetic disguise for nightmare conformity and human slavery.  

www.freedombc.co.uk

https://www.bitchute.com/video/f32plZivn0oZ

Image: St John the Baptist, Leonardo da Vinci