Before my first LSD experience I really didn't know what the term "higher states of consciousness" meant. I assumed it would have something to do with a deeper insight or ability to understand things. And while that is true to some extent, it is more the result of higher states of consciousness, and not necessarily characteristic of these states themselves.
Say what?
Well, putting this into language is kind of a faux-pas because language itself is a code, an attempt to translate "what is going on" (what is perceived by all senses, known and yet unknown) into a way that the linear mind can grasp and make sense of through its usual way of operation. Causality. Action-reaction. Cause and effect. Language.
In my experience, higher states of consciousness are marked by the sheer ability to perceive the interconnectivity of things previously assumed to be separate. It may sound like a cliché but ever since witnessing this live and especially with other people it is hard for me to put this in a more concise way than this. Other people are especially significant for this process of recognizing interconnectivity on some mystical or ungraspable level because their "reaction" to my "action" can be a mindblowing testimony to my perceptions made on these states that my rational mind tries its best to vehemently deny while my senses clearly show me it IS happening - that is because other people are themselves visibly aware centers of perception and embodiments of energetic currents and conditioned ego-mixups. Which means they 'react' to my own inner recognitions of what I perceive and what my mind makes of it, other than say plants that may also 'react' but where the mind has much greater ease in denying that the plant's reaction is actually happening and not just some figment of the imagination.
Common experiences with higher states
So then, what are these higher states exactly? I vow to say they are "merely" a way to get in touch with one's own ability to trust your senses, both the senses we are familiar with but ESPECIALLY the ones we have always been told are anecdotal, imaginary and ultimately fictional.
For example: Many people will be able to recall instances where they had a "gut feeling". I would readily say that this is a prime example of higher states of consciousness. An odd sensation that is often in opposition to sheer logic and the rationale of the mind, but an experience that most people will have had - even without the use of psychedelics. You can probably relate.
Another example would be the sense of being stared at from behind or through a window, before consciously witnessing that somebody actually IS staring at you. There is a certain feeling you get, which you can imagine like the tip of a submerged mountain you can notice peaking out of the water even without any psychedelics in your system. It's the senses they have not been able to beat out of us completely yet. Hooray!
For the most part, mainstream media will not acknowledge this phenomenon neither will the academic institutions of our era because it fundamentally messes with the core assumptions of our age, the materialist reductionist cosmology of causation and... physicality-obsession, if I may be so blunt.
The thing is, higher states of consciousness don't end there. Not by any means. These examples are but tiny previews of what human beings are capable of if we can manage to disable the filters in our mind and mode of perception, something that I could never have done without the conscious use of psychedelics and a few friends' empathic introduction to substances like lsd in a transformation-spurring environment.
Many spiritual teachers have argued that higher states can also be reached without the use of psychedelics.
And this is the thing, the point of this article, if I can still manage to capture it - which I am doubtful of^^
Ever since these mindblowing experiences where the whole "happening" around me was clearly a grand orchestra of wiggles that all bounce off each other in sync (hehe) it has become easier - dare I say common - to see these interconnections even without any psychedelics in my body. I rarely go on psychedelic journeys as it is, and as opposed to other psychonauts I have never gone half as far as most. I have but glimpsed it. And still I find that the lessons, the imprints and the experiments I have done on these states of mind (and the resulting conclusions that I have retested dozens of times) have largely carried over into my daily life because they are simply so profound and lifechanging.
It's like a door has been opened that can never be shut again. These states have made me more aware of what is happening around me. Sometimes this can be painful, not exactly sure why and I want to explore that more in future parts of whatever it is I am writing here. But it was worth having these experiences. Completely.
Higher states then are marked not only by the ability to perceive more of what is happening but first and foremost to TRUST it. I may even say that not being willing to trust our perceptions is what precludes us from having them consciously, or from recognizing them in the first place. I am willing to say that higher states are the norm but that the way we have been brought up, the cultural narratives and all the baggage of who we have been told we supposedly are is countering those abilities all of us have by nature. I am fairly convinced all kids have these states by default (will get back to that in future parts as well).
And so revisiting these abilities through the respectful and conscious use of psychedelics can not only open the door to our own greatness in capability, it makes life as a whole a lot more meaningful especially in the long run - long after the psychedelic trip has ended and the experiences have become a memory.
The filters of the mind may return but the underlying... eye for the interconnectivity will never leave you again, especially if you have tested things out in an experimental fashion on these states, something I owed to myself and to my rational mind and something that I can definitely recommend for anyone new to these experiences. Just for the sake of "really being sure" that things are actually as far-out as they appear to be. Being skeptical is awesome, but I can almost guarantee you even the most skeptical worldview will not withstand the impacts of the things you are about to witness on higher states. Maybe that is the reason why so many dogmatic materialists I have met in the past swear that subjective experiences are meaningless. It's such a copout and part of the same randomness and causality notion underlying our modern era.
Should you choose to go onto higher states with the help of psychedelics: please, be respectful and care-ful. Less is more, you want to know that the substance is actually what it says it is and that your environemt is suited for the experience (don't take psychedelics with odd people you don't trust in dirty dark alleyways in some unknown city or something like that).
Higher states can be extremely potent because our mind is not used to dealing with so much input at once. And while these state are temporary, the sheer overdemand on the mind to defend itself against the onslaught of input has caused a lot of damage in the past to people who had an arrogant attitude towards these plant teachers and substances like lsd. And if they have made it through the epxerience (and most have) it will have greatly humbled them. Remember when I said there are no accidents? ;)
Imagine it like walking in darkness and somebody suddenly turns a big spotlight on your face. It hurts your eyes. It's way too much. Start by opening your eyes slowly, glimpse through the keyhole before ripping open that door in a heartbeat. It has long remained closed and will wait for you forever, until you are ready one day. I for one am not ready for the full experience and will take my sweet time until I am an old man or whenever it calls me, but slowly opening the door more and more by fractions of an inch each time I go on a journey in summertime has been such a delight. I am decades away from opening that door fully and I can say it has already transformed everything I thought was real into something dimensions more profound than I ever thought possible. And I see it everywhere on a daily basis, the remnants of the higher states I have experienced with faint hints to what I would see were I actually on lsd. The world has started speaking in its own charming way and it's like you can actually get what it is saying. How it is saying it. And how intimately relevant it is.
The experiences want out to come in
As I will probably write about in some upcoming parts: Psychedelics may be the last safety anchor humanity has to remember what life is, who we are and what is actually going on. Because it has absolutely nothing to do with the artificial theatre we are so involved in every day, the things the media says, the problems we occupy our minds with, the causes we are getting involved in. Reality is much more profound than the mind constructs we are fed and perpetuate daily for not trusting our senses and believing other people's narratives about what is important.
And so I feel I want to write down what I can in language about what these conduits of insight have done for me in my life, and to focus more on these transforming aspects that have touched me deeper than most bits of rational information in the "outside world" I have evr come across.
Watch me flip back on "bad days" as well ;) Higher states of consciousness and go hand in hand with higher states of being (how you feel) and the days I feel sad or depressed are the ones where I am most far away from being able to read the universe at all or to see the interconnectivity of everything. But then I do still have the memories of what I perceived, and they always get me out of the hole sooner than later. Door has been opened too many times to forget completely. <3
unsplash.com
unsplash.com
unsplash.com
unsplash.com
unsplash.com