Metaphysics of a Salvia experience

I’ve wanted to write about what was possibly my strongest psychedelic experience, and what I make of it as a philosopher, for a while now. I was waiting until I figured out an interpretation and implications that were solid and definitive – but in truth I think that’s never going to happen.

I should first point out that at time and place I had this experience, the substance I used was not illegal. As a general rule, I’d prefer to change (or altogether remove) a bad law rather than break it – and I’d encourage others to consider doing the same: Remember, some forms of disobedience actually support the status quo. As for the organisations that are trying to make these changes, that’s a post for another day.

Some years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I managed to acquire some Salvia divinorum - Diviner's Sage - extract. This wasn’t the first psychoactive drug that I’d had experience with (I had previously drunk alcohol after all), but this one filled me with a sense of caution, foreboding or, for want of a better word, gravity. I’d read up on it online, done my homework on possible dosages and effects, and had tried a little – just enough to feel it.

What I couldn’t seem to do was psych myself up enough to take a ‘breakthrough’ dose. Not, at least, until I staggered home one night from a party. Full of beer-fuelled courage & lack of caution, I got my insomniac flatmate to act as a sitter, grabbed the improvised smoking implement, and said: “Let’s do this!”

The mechanics of smoking that much salvia extract in a short time are un-edifying – basically my friend kept packing his bong with it and handing it to me until it hit me.

After the 5th or 6th, I handed it back to him and lay down on the floor as reality quickly dissolved in a tessellating shower of brassy squarish-fractal sparks.

I found myself, disembodied, in a place of vaguely undulating, golden, and somewhat foggy glowing light. There wasn’t anyone else there, but I didn’t feel as if I were alone – though I say ‘I’ with some reservation. I don't think it was ego-death, more just that there was no room to consider my self-identity: like if you're surfing a big wave, you aren't thinking about what it means to be 'you' (or I don't at least).

Looking across the fields of light, I felt an instinctive understanding that what I perceived as distance in this place was actually a separation in time; that elsewhere and else-when were similar or interchangeable. I took this to be the perspective that one might have if your consciousness was made of disembodied light. This wasn’t an abstraction; it felt overwhelmingly real and all-encompassing.

It might not sound like much compared to self-replicating machine elves and serpent-spirits, but the strength and immediacy of what I felt I knew was extreme. I understood where I was, and how this related to my normal waking life, deeply and fully. I understood the light because I was the light and for a moment the tesseract of spacetime made sense.

I didn’t have much recollection of time passing, but soon enough the fluffy golden light bled away and I re-joined everyday reality laying on my friend’s floor. Apparently, I’d been there for some minutes mumbling ‘time is a vector’ or something like that. I put myself to bed, not at all looking forward to integrating this experience whilst hungover. Side note: for the next few days I really felt like that plant had psychologically kicked my ass, and deservedly so. If you are lucky enough to be somewhere where it’s legal, do try to treat it with a bit more respect than I did.

What to make of this experience though? Did the plant show me some metaphysical truth? I’m not sure. And even if it did, I’m not sure what to say about it.

My ideas about what was going on clearly tracked an idea from one of my favourite books: Last Legends of Earth, by A.A. Attanasio. In this book (and in fact the whole series), Attanasio presents a dramatization of consciousness, karma, reincarnation and afterlife via some very entertaining speculation. Namely, that the electromagnetic radiation from our nervous systems radiates into empty space during our lifetimes, and stays there forever, expanding into the void at the speed of light, carrying our consciousness with it once it’s free of our material bodies. Dead characters in these books even describe the vantage point of their mode of existence as being in the ‘fields of light’.

Does this mean I just imagined an illustration of an idea I found both fascinating and appealing? I can neither confirm or deny the truth of what I saw. (For what it’s worth, Attanasio, who was nice enough to correspond with me at length about metaphysics via email, was quite circumspect on whether or not he actually believed his dramatic cosmology.) I‘m not too worried that I drew from the experience and framework I had, in order to interpret what happened, because that’s what we always do - even with our everyday mundane experiences.

I think a big part of the difficulty here is fitting something into language where there are no appropriate causal linkages between what I experienced and the words I have at my disposal. There’s normally a certain kind of relation between our words and the world, but a breakthrough psychedelic experience breaks this relationship down - temporarily at least.

Ludwig Wittgenstein said “What can be shown cannot be said” - things that can’t be formed into sensible and sayable propositions can only be shown. He put things like the logical form of the world (in its most total sense), ethics, metaphysics, and ‘the mystical’, into this category of things that are not sayable.

I’m not totally sold on everything Wittgenstein puts in the unsayable category. But when it comes to experiences of this nature, I think he’s on the money. I can’t tell you what I saw, because the experience has no connection to the words I currently have. More than that, if Wittgenstein is right, this isn’t a matter of finding better words - there are some places where language simply cannot go. Thus, I can paint a picture for you using words, but no words can interpret the relation between this picture and what actually happened.

Though I’m not not new to philosophy, I am new to trying to analyse these experiences philosophically. So this isn’t as good as what someone like Peter Sjöstedt-H or William James would come up with. Nonetheless, I hope it’s given you all something to think about -I certainly exercised my brain writing it!

Thanks for reading. Obviously, upvotes and resteems are appreciated, but I love comments too! Please feel free to share your thoughts, observations questions etc.

Image via SpiritMolecule.com