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Michaux, Henri - Miserable Miracle Mescaline - Mescaline can only furnish stunts
Identifier
004035
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Henri Michaux – Miserable Miracle Mescaline
Mescaline can only furnish stunts: I see an enormous restaurant. Numerous stories, and people eating on all the balconies (yes there are balconies and with pillarets), thousands of tables, thousands of people eating, thousands of waiters in blue jackets. Funny idea! Dishes are served. Dishes are removed. Are served again. Are re-removed. No sooner is the dish served than the plate is taken away. No sooner is the plate set down than the dish is taken away. The speed is no longer even that of a comic gag, but of a metronome. It is not that of an alternating current either. Try to picture the details. These diners are like mannequins, the waiters too. No expression one can remember. No individuality in the movements either. What possible explanation? This utterly idiotic spectacle is the translation of a prodigious mechanism. One must realise that Mescaline provokes the most violent sensations of hunger, here one instant, gone the next - sparks of hunger.
Mescaline instantaneously images and realises sensations of ideas without the least participation of will and without any conscious desire. The silly gag is the result of this perfect automatic functioning.