Observations placeholder
Opium overdose
Identifier
007655
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
This is an extract from a long report that can be found on EROWID. He is in India, Varanasi, and the amount he had would constitute overdose. He had both an opium cookie and smoked extra opium. He had been on a boat trip which had unnerved him and then got back to the room, when there was an electricity cut.
I have classified this as rebirth because although the experience did not complete as a full rebirth, that is how it looks like it might have proceeded if he had had the necessary helpers. Opium is not a good way to obtain a rebirth.
D.lean was his friend.
It should be noted that he was very lucky to survive as he appears to have suffered from respiratory depression - the inevitable side effect of opium. He may have passed out from hypoxia.
A description of the experience
Citation: Blackie Lawless. "Bad Bhang Recipe: An Experience with Cannabis & Opium (ID 45464)". Erowid.org. Jan 28, 2006. erowid.org/exp/45464
The first thing that my mind wanted to do is perceive the darkness for what it is and merely understand the dimensions of the room. But unfortunately, when I go to find the information about the room I am in that was previously stored in my brain, it is missing.
This is clearly a bad foreshadowing for where the rest of my information might be when I need it. …... I just sat there and stared foward.
After I couldn't perceive the dimensions of the room, I tried to remember the shape of the building and how it juxtaposed the street. After I couldn't remember the building or the room I was in, I tried to remember what town and what country I was in. After I couldn't picture anything about where anywhere was in relation to what 'home' might be, I tried to remember who I was.
Then I realized that I didn't realize anything.
I couldn't picture arms and legs or beds or rooms or people or any construct that could help my mind describe 'being' at all. Now I was just a hovering spot of light.
In 'Center of the Cyclone' Jon Lilly will tell you that this experience is a type of 'Satori' and that he achieved it regularly by taking ketamine and LSD and going into sensory deprivation chambers. He tells fantastic stories of the entities that came to him when he was a hovering light and guided him through the universe, teaching him the secrets behind reality and its cogs. I can only guess that it took immense amounts of practice for him to shake the inevitable fear one experiences when one completely evaporates.
And I'm not talking about Ram Dass losing all concepts of 'self' and realizing it's all gonna be fine .... Ram Dass had the fucking lights on and he was on his couch and shit.
Light delivers all reality to humans ... and obviously, like every facit born of the birth of this universe we take the parameters of 'reality' for granted every waking minute. Like Carl Sagan said.. This world as we know it is only just one brief moment that appears to us to be an endless horizon of time ... this time grants comfort ... and this comfort breeds complacency ... and from complacency stems ultimate stupidity and eventual destruction.
It would have been nice to have guides to explain the universe to me... but when I needed them no one came.
This bred intense panic because I was experiencing an ultimate philosophical death.
Physicality, itself, had been rendered meaningless and all there was was me and deep dark space... but I couldn't really tell the difference. I heard myself saying 'Shit!' ...'Shit!' .. 'Shit!' (the most often-uttered last words).
My body got up and tried to open the door... it was self-locking from the inside? I couldn't leave... and I was having trouble breathing .. -
Eventually D.lean somehow opened it for me and I tried to run and get to any light.. there was no light and I fell down the stairs ... I kept going down until I saw the light from a doorway on the first floor ... I ran towards it ... I got to the front door and it was locked shut with a huge metal gate ... I didn't know what to do.... I stood there clutching the bars looking out into the street not knowing who or where I was and felt like I was the pathetic target of a mean-spirited joke at the tragic end of an episode of the Twilight Zone.
Pantingly heavily, I looked around the room and then looked down near my feet. I could partially see a little Indian man lying down on the stone floor. I'm sure I just stared at him bug-eyed and panting. He motioned for me to join him and lie down on the floor beside him. I had no option. I lay down and remember nothing else afterwards.
I came to India with no camera, no journal and ultimately no interest in traveling.
For the previous year I had been the happiest I had ever been in my life. Every single day I woke up and understood what it was to appreciate Life in its immediate sense, and that was what I had previously been looking for since the day I was born. My attitude was that wherever I went, I had been Ultimately invited and was afraid of no one, able to talk to anyone and experience myself as a part of the order that the universe had deigned when good had won over evil in the beginning; for that year the world was absolutely perfect and had finally become my home... but the next day when I woke up I never felt that way ever again.
It taught me that anyone can be slapped down, cornered and made to make choices in life they never saw previously as a possibility. Anyone can be dealt a hand that will destroy them... and sometimes they can do nothing but play a part that is already scripted for them. You never know where you will be a year from now and what types of unwanted bloody sacrifices you may have to make or internally dividing and potentially destroying decisions you may have to choose from. You can never anticipate the filthly, disgusting or demoralizing things you may have to face within your own mortality. Just be glad that it is behind you after it's over.