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Seeing the Music
LSD
Citation:   guff103. "Seeing the Music: An Experience with LSD (exp1382)". Erowid.org. May 11, 2001. erowid.org/exp/1382

 
DOSE:
250 ug oral LSD

We entered the park at about 11am, and, against our better judgement, we decided to drop the acid before we had found a suitable place to settle down. On our expedition to find a place to settle, we foolishly located a serene spot in a field of cows. I noticed the cows started to approach us, so we quickly made our departure into the next field. In this adjacent field, we set up the groundsheet and blanket that was going to be our home for the next 5-6 hours. This seemed like it was the perfect spot to be as we approached the event which would confirm the potency of the acid for sure - those first distortions in our vision.

The next half an hour or so seemed to go quite slowly. We talked to each other as we felt the acid coming on. It was a beautiful summer day, and we chose to lie on our backs and stare at the sky. As we stared, we talked some more. I watched the clouds move across the sky, the patterns they made reminded me of steam rising into your face as you look down into a boiling kettle from a height. This, it suddenly occurred to me, was not actually happening! Clouds, in my experience, could never move with such ferocity and volatility - there was another force at work here, the acid. 'Shit, look at the clouds!' I said to my friends, as the 3 of us stared. I decided that now would be a good time to close my eyes, and observe the patterns on the inside of my eyelids. I noticed a kind of binding pattern to the vision; concentric hexagonal ripples, emanating from the focus of my vision, flowing, distorting everything I saw. I opened my eyes again, and noticed that the pattern remained there, superimposed onto everything I looked at.

At once, it began to rain. Just a slight shower, but what an incredible experience! I was on my back, staring straight up into the sky, with the rain falling around me! I saw tracers on each raindrop, creating a kind of random 'tunnel' around me, stretching off into the clouds. I opened my mouth to taste the rain. It jostled and sparked in my mouth, all at once sweet, salty, bitter and sour. I was overcome by the sensory information being transmitted to my brain by my tastebuds. The rain stopped as quickly as it had begun, and we all decided to roll over and look at the world.

I stared at the blanket. Those checks on it, squares of cream separated by strands of dark red and brown, seemed to somehow become free of their surrounding squares and not be part of the blanket as a whole, but separate entities in their own right. They distorted somewhat, and the blanket, when I looked at it as a whole, waved up and down at me, seemingly about to take off from the ground.

The hairs on the backs of my arms suddenly leapt into life, thrusting themselves upon my consciousness, growing, changing.... I felt strange as a result of this, because it was me that was changing also, not just the surroundings. I decided not to look at my arm anymore, and made a decision to save the spiritual experience until later on in the trip.

Suddenly, my friend said, 'Look at this!!' - he had found a tiny, green insect making its way across his arm! It wasn’t making much headway, the hairs seemed too much of an obstacle for it. We collectively realised that we had experienced a unique insight into the world of that insect...its struggles seemed as insignificant to us as our own struggles throughout our own lives! I became aware that I was being shown something, something new, a new truth was making itself gently known to me.

I looked around me, at the field. The panorama of looking at the grass from a low angle was breathtaking. It was as though things close up were moving very slightly, not much at all, things in the middle-distance were moving on a kind of light, waving level, and the trees in the far distance were contorting out of all proportion, almost unrecognisable in their waving, flowing appearance. They looked alive to me, not as 'trees' but as actual beings, full of life. I said to my friends: 'I’d love to be a tree - pure being, no attachments, no complications.' I still mean this now. I looked at the bushes. They were glowing with life, and colour. I went 'into' the bushes, and came out again.

One of my friends decided to stand up, to see what it was like. I joined him in this venture, and we were blown away by the experience of walking around in this state, like it was a totally novel act! We strayed from our blanket acid-home, but were drawn back towards it by some mysterious force: a binding visual field surrounding that place, I wasn’t sure what it was. The more I strayed, the weaker it got, and the nearer I got to that place, the stronger it got, like a mist in the air of pure colour and life. I decided to try to pin-point the source of it. I walked around, and homed in on an object...what was this? It was seemingly the source of the visions. I laughed in pure elation when I realised what it was: a small black tape recorder! It wasn’t a visual field after all! It was a sound field, of simple oriental music, transfiguring my world.

I wondered what it would be like if I stopped the tape. But when I did, I felt cold, like something was missing, and one of my companions said, 'Hey, I was enjoying that!' so I resumed the tape. We stood there, slowly walking around in this new world. One of my companions asked me a question: 'Are you there?' It was as simple as that. Was I there? 'Yes,' I replied. We were all in that other place, a new realm of experience. Shit, yes, I was there!

One of my companions remarked, 'I feel like dancing!' He danced around a bit, and actually removed his t-shirt and began to wave it around. I began to feel restless. I kicked off my shoes, in an attempt to make myself feel more comfortable. I felt like I should do something, like this was too precious an experience to waste. I made continual suggestions to my friends as to what we should do: 'Let’s go and look at the cows' or 'Let’s jump up and down.' I think this was an attempt to make the experience more memorable - because I would have memories of actually doing things on acid, as opposed to just recollections of feelings. It made sense to me at the time...until a friend said to me, 'You say 'let’s do things,' but you are already doing it!' 'Yes!!' came my response. I was already doing it! Nonetheless, I picked up the orange which my friend had brought with him. I began to peel it, and the smell was incredible. I ate some of it, but it didn’t seem right that I should be hiding this from my eyes by swallowing it, so I held it for a short time. Then I decided to throw the orange. It glided through the air - leaving a sparkling train behind it, like a rainbow.

By this time, the hallucinations were becoming more and more intense. The 'pattern' was everywhere I looked, overtaking my normal vision, distorting everything beyond recognition. I fell into a deep state of understanding, like I now knew what the psychedelic experience was about, and that I would be changed by it forever. I had abandoned any sense of verbal concept - my wish to conceptualise/verbalise had disappeared earlier on in the trip, following the suggestion of a friend that there should be no talking for a period in the trip. I felt like I understood some Ultimate Truth, the truth at the head of all other truths, from which everything else is stemmed. My thoughts at the time were, 'This must be God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, what else could it be?' And this, I think, was the crucial point in the trip: the realisation that if 'God' could be bought in the form of a drug, how could 'God' exist in any external form? My belief in God was shattered! I didn’t feel bad about it, I felt like I truly understood the foundations of theology and religion. I had experienced what Saint John had experienced in the Book of Revelation, but he had been unable to interpret it correctly...an experience which was completely mind-blowing.

My visions had a central focus, which seemed to take on the appearance of anything which I thought about at the time. I could see my thoughts - they were taking a visual form in front of my eyes. I don’t know whether my eyes were open or closed at that time, but I don’t believe it would have mattered that much anyway. Now the only sense I had was a sense of my own thoughts. Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am. Suddenly, I got a glimpse of something which shocked me to the point of not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Whilst Cartesian reasoning led me to think about myself, suddenly I felt all images of 'self' or 'ego' beginning to seem like they were no more real than the concepts of 'God' or 'Time.' I had no sense of individuality. I am unable to describe this state any more than this, but I can refer to the Tibetan Book of the Dead and use Buddhist terms to describe my experience: an ego-loss state, a state of non-game ecstasy, the Clear Light.

No sooner had it appeared than it disappeared. I felt a bit shaken by what I had experienced. Suddenly, the 'game reality' came flooding back, and I realised that my surroundings had changed profoundly since the start of the trip. It was now pouring rain, and all my stuff had got pretty wet. I had lost my glasses; my shoes, when located were full of rain-water. I realised that I had been walking around in circles, confused. I had no sense of time, and I felt like something was wrong. I could no longer recall the experiences which I had just been blessed with. I felt like we should go somewhere, but this time to get out of the field - what I imagined to be the source of the 'badness.' My friends were sitting under the groundsheet, sheltered from the rain. I looked at them, and realised that I had been completely into another world! I just thought 'fuck it, no point fighting it,' and through mental exhaustion, I fell to the ground, face first, into the mud. Actually, it wasn’t as bad as all that. When I decided that it should be OK to look now, I propped up my head with my hands.

The rain had stopped, and the sun was brilliant in the sky. My friend was reading from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and he kept saying how it made perfect sense to him, but I felt uninterested. I couldn’t remember the experience. My friends said, 'Before you couldn’t say enough about the experience, and now you won’t say anything!' I told them that I couldn’t remember the trip.

Actually, I could remember the events that took place, but many months later I did acid again and I was reminded of the experience again! The sight of the pattern suddenly brought back much of the trip, and this is how I am able to relate this experience with you.

I hope you found this interesting....

Exp Year: 2000ExpID: 1382
Gender: Not Specified 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: May 11, 2001Views: 16,352
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LSD (2) : First Times (2), Mystical Experiences (9), General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)

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