The following is very much a work in progress...a rough draft of my first attempt to describe a 2 & a 1/2 hour experience on the drug ketamine hydrochloride....

It should in no way be thought of as complete....

The dividers indicate breaks in the narrative....parts of the experience which will later be filled in...

The experience itself lasted 2 & a 1/2 hours...it's taken me 2 & a 1/2 years to begin to put it into words...

I'll begin by saying that at the moment the drug was injected into me (2 IM injections of 60 mgs each), I was not completely certain that I would survive the experience....

I was keenly aware that I was messing around with a powerful dissociative anesthetic which could conceivably kill me....

Moreover, I was doing so in a candle-lit urban apartment at 2 AM....

The real fear of actual death was in me....minimized, controlled....but very much present....

When the drug reached my brain I knew immediately it was unlike any other drug I had ever taken...

Several things happened simultaneously.

1)  I began to laugh; a deep, total, incredibly satisfying laughter...the giggle of a small child who's just slipped away from the adults and is doing exactly as he pleases...the relieved, heartfelt chuckle of someone who's just realized "The Catastrophe" was an ingenious practical joke...

It was a laugh rich in irony...

"How could I have ever been afraid of anything?" I asked in complete amazement...

This was more than the mere absence of fear..this was a state in which I could not imagine how fear had ever been possible...

2)  I immediately became aware that time was a totality...that past, present and future did not exist outside the human conception of them....

3)  I knew instinctively that there was no such thing as death....

4)  I knew I had been in this "place" before...that this was the "real" reality...

5)  I became aware that I was "God", but that the realization was insignificant, since I could not  do anything whatsoever...

(To clarify: "I am God" was the handiest metaphor available to describe the sudden, profound realization that the entire Universe was contained inside "my" mind; whereas "but it doesn't matter" reflected an equally profound understanding that I could not move or act.....any action or thought of action would have destroyed the balance which had resulted in the possibility of the first statement, "I am God". Therefore, "being God" was something of a paradox, since "God" is rather like an unborn baby...)
 
 

I sensed an intelligence within me...

This intelligence was moving-without-moving, which is to say; it was moving, but it's motion was along an infinite trajectory, so that it's speed, relative to infinity, was always zero.

For all intents and purposes, it might as well not have been moving at all, given the infinity of space.

Nevertheless, it was.

In addition to the movement/non-movement along it's trajectory, it's internal motion was like that of an intricate puzzle, a complex, moving pattern of geometric forms, continuous and ever-changing.

As I gazed into it, I felt as though all possible psychological and emotional needs were being fulfilled at the same time, by which I mean I felt both longing and attainment, both the ache of desire and the satisfaction of it...each touching and annihilating the other with a tiny electric "kiss" that exploded in a flash of orgasm.

It was both utterly peaceful and breathlessly thrilling...I can only describe this feeling as hanging motionless in a state of perfect serenity while at the same time plunging at lightspeed thru an infinite void.

I felt myself become one with The Dance...

All questions of "why" & "how" were utterly and forever resolved.

It would be inaccurate to say that they were "answered"; rather, the questions themselves became meaningless.

Once inside The Dance, one knew why...and how was The Dance itself...

The Dance did not recognize the concept of "purpose"

It didn't know where it had come from, didn't care where it was going.

There was only The Dance and that was enough.

I felt I could have remained in The Dance for eternity in perfect contentment, but what I can only describe as a "telepathic whisper" that seemed to come from inside me & outside me at the same time said, "There's more..."

My attention was drawn by a large polyhedral shape the color of charcoal...

It was moving toward me very slowly, with an odd motion that reminded me of a tugboat or a slow locomotive...chugga chugga chugga chugga....

I felt no emotion toward this object other than a detached fascination with it's movements...

It's surface was like dull-black diamonds, the facets of which churned and seethed like molten rock billowing onto an ocean floor...each plane collapsing inward and thrusting another up from the depths of it's teeming core...

It was as if space itself were folding in and out of existence like an origami sculpture.

(It wasn't until many months after the experience that I began to identify this object as a carbon molecule.)
 
 

I was gliding over a broad plain, dotted with pyramids.

The horizon curved away at an unexpected angle, as though it might have been the surface of a small moon.

The sky above it was inky-black and starless.

This place was more ancient than ancient; a place outside of time...

The pyramids were the souls of those who had found the place where time stops...

I assumed pyramidal form in a manner reminiscent of a bird perching, folding it's wings and tucking it's head beneath them...

I was composed of the sand of eternity, the grains of which were lifetimes...
 
 

"Coming down" was rather like coming through a transporter beam...

The first thing I became dimly aware of was that there was a "limit" to my being.

I don't know how else to describe this...only that there was suddenly an "edge" to me where there had been no edge before.

This "edge" slowly took form, a pale, fuzzy but ever-incresing ring of light which seemed to encircle me, growing rapidly in thickness until it became a ball of glowing, nebulous cotton...thicker than fog, yet it had no substance, only light.

At the moment this "glob" engulfed me, the scene suddenly turned very "sci fi".

The best way I can describe it is to say that, beginning at precisely the top of my head, some Great Cosmic Laser began reconstructing my body, particle by particle, layer by layer, similar to the way in which a hologram is created.

It was as though I were being etched back in to the Universe.

The quality of this "laser beam" was that of a brilliant white light shot through a diamond...liquid-clear, lustral, dancing with a billion tiny halos of spectra.

The "beam" seemed to be emitting from a distant light-mass, the rays of which curved outward forming into two, 3-dimensional fan-shaped "magnetic fields" formed of concentric layers of varicolored light, reminiscent of the Van Allen belts, of angels' wings, of computer projections of the shape of the Universe.

When the beam had finished "reconstructing" me, I felt gargantuan...a body the size of a galaxy.

I stretched out a newly-formed hand and much to my amazement I discovered......another "edge"!

With the unrestrained passion of an explorer who's just caught sight of an undiscovered continent, I eagerly examined this new "edge".

For what seemed like centuries, my fingertips wandered it's strange geometry; gliding across it's broad, flat planes and hard, sharp edges.

I felt my newly-formed mouth make "words", my newly-formed ears "heard" them.

"This is an OBJECT!" I proclaimed, and the word "OBJECT" rippled outward and back from the uttermost end of being.

It was as though at that moment the entire concept of "object" had been born for the very first time.

My thumb pushed against an oddly roughened plane and the surface of the "object" gave!

It seemed to "collapse" inward, disintegrating into a thousand tiny "edges" that brushed lightly against my new-formed thumb.

I pushed further and the surface split open, broadening into 2 wide, flat planes with a deep chasm at the center.

My fingers ran along the lip of this chasm, explored the depths of it.

I felt the surface beneath my thumb slip, sliding like an island of crust atop a sea of moving magma.

The plane shot upward!

Suddenly, with an incredible sense of personal triumph, I knew what the object was!

"It's a BOOK!" I cried, as pleased with myself as any 1-year-old who's just discovered a new word.

The plane that had shot so suddenly upward was called a "page"!

The concept thrilled me, filled me...I became "book"; great bulging libraries of them! I was ancient piles of scrolls molding on disordered shelves in Alexandria, I was the first Guttenberg Bible, I was Uncle Tom's Cabin, Lolita, Dune, Catcher in the Rye...

Books were ideas given form...

Books were transmitters, time machines...conduits of civilization...

I saw history as a long hallway with an infinite number of doors.

As I passed them, I "smelled" the centuries...spices in the air in the market of Samarkand, the smoke of burnt sacrifice rising from the altars of Babylon, tasted the dust thrown up by the heels of camels, the ice-blue bite of glaciers on the wind...

History was an epic poem, a symphony without end...the triumphs and tragedies only interludes, the pauses and crescendos in an eternal score...

It was heartbreaking, poignant...

I laughed and wept for the beauty and tragedy of Mankind...

I felt myself overwhelmed with love...the blue earth, the little people there...

I fell in love with them and their epic tale, the way one falls in love with the characters in a novel...

"Don't be afraid!" I called out across the pages of centuries, "You're only dreaming!"

It seemed the most important thing I could possibly do was wake them up, to remind them they were dreaming...

It was vital, in fact...nothing else mattered except that they remember...

I had to go back to the little earth and wake them...

The Universe smiled and whispered "It doesn't matter, they're only dreaming. They remember, they just don't remember that they do..."