This article is a first person narrative on an experience that I had while smoking salvia.
Preparing Myself
I have experienced the effects of salvia on several occasions and know that its effects are intense. Yet, I’m apprehensive. I cannot quite remember what it truly felt like to be taken away by the plant and the uncertainly creeps into me like a quiet dread.
I am anxious and excited all at once. I encourage myself to proceed.
There is something to be learned from each altered state experience. Something to be learned about the world but more importantly about the self. I sit cross legged in an open space on the floor and in a quiet room. Alone, I prepare myself by closing my eyes and clearing my mind of any negative or harmful thoughts. I want my mind open to the experience and to the lessons that the plant has to offer. I say a silent prayer to myself and to the universe to give me courage and to show me whatever it is that I need to see.
What do I need to see?
Leaving the External World of the Senses
I ignite a lighter in my hand and touch the flame to the small water pipe that has been carefully packed with ground up salvia leave extract. I inhale deeply, filling my lungs with the gentle smoke, and hold my breath for as long as I am able to. I exhale the spent air and then immediately take another hit from the pipe. Staring at the burning ember that is inches from my face, I hold my breath once again.
Almost immediately I can feel myself drifting away from reality. Quickly I put down the pipe and the lighter as my vision becomes distorted.
I can feel my brain trying to hang onto reality. I see the floor, the walls and the pipe in front of me as my mind desperately categorizes these things in an attempt to make sense of the world. But it fails miserably.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
The floor swirls up the wall and becomes fused with it to the point where neither can be distinguished from the other. Geometric shapes of various colours and textures become superimposed over my vision like projected images shone on a pane of glass.
Inside my Mind
I’m in my mind looking through a window onto the world.
I continue to drift inward, quickly leaving the external world of the senses and entering the depths of my own mind. I forget that I have inhaled a substance. I am no longer thinking of anything.
Bright red, yellow and blue colors flashing. Strange music, brassy and distorted.
An image of a circus.
A yellow, red and blue tent existing in a tiny world in my mind. A vibrant red and blue dragon fly’s through the air in a mass of swirling color.
Did that just happen?
It all happens in micro seconds. Did I actually see those images or were they backwards rationalizations? False memories created by my mind to make sense of something inconceivable?
Behind the Curtain
I am overcome by a strange feeling. It happens each time I try salvia. It’s impossible to think in this place. All I can do is absorb the colours and the intense feelings permeating through my…not my body or brain…through my consciousness?
I feel as though I am in another dimension that exists parallel with normal reality. Now that I am here in this place, I get a sense that this dimension is always present around me, like I could at any time peel back an invisible curtain to reveal it. Strangely, I feel comforted by its familiarity.
“He’s coming”
I do not hear the voice but I sense it. Like a telepathic message planted directly into my mind. I feel a great sense of welcoming as if I am about to be greeted momentarily.
By whom I do not know, but there is an intense warmth and love in the feeling, like I’m being called by a mother or father that has been searching for me my entire life. I cannot see who is calling me.
The voice is just beyond a wall of color.
My consciousness reaches toward the feeling trying desperately to make contact but before the identity of the voice is revealed I begin to drift away.
Coming Back
The substance rapidly wears off and I am suddenly back in the external world. My vision is still distorted but I realize that I have smoked something and that it is wearing off. I try desperately to hang onto the feeling and to launch myself back into the mysterious world of warmth and color. But things are becoming clearer.
“Oh my god”
”Wow”
”Wow”
”Oh my god”
I can hear my voice saying the words. Over and over and over again. I’m stuck in a shocked sense of awe. I am coming down rapidly at this point. My mind is fuzzy but I’m almost back to normal.
I’m left with a sense of sadness. Like I want to go back to that place. To see more. To meet the strange voices that I heard. But I don’t know how.
Conclusion
Overall, I would personally categorize the salvia experience as a near death encounter. It’s very hard to make sense of it all in the moment, but overall I get the impression that it is what it feels like to die. It may sound morbid, but for me the experience is quite pleasant.
Personally, it makes me not fear death. With salvia one’s consciousness slowly drifts away from the external world of the senses (vision, hearing and body sensation) and moves inward toward the strange images of the mind. Disassociated colors and shapes.
Though I have not experienced it, I feel as though there is a third stage in the process that involves exiting the mind and moving to a place beyond. A place beyond the wall of color.
It’s a question that remains with me and one that I do not have the answer to - unfortunately.
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