Salvia D – smoked leaf, about ½ gram. I have smoked SD three times before – the last time was New Years Eve. I smoked quickly with a water pipe – and on the third lungful the familiar effects started. FAMILIAR! What followed was awesome. I was instantly bi-located – sat with my eyes still open, but at the same time somewhere else altogether. Please remember that this entire description is difficult – words cannot remotely capture it, they feel misleading to the point of ludicrousness. I will do my best. I knew in that moment that I have been doing this forever. My awareness popped back into a place that I had left just a moment before – the last time I smoked Salvia. And also the time I smoked it before that, and the times I took the ‘Emerald Essence’ form of Salvia. Let me get this clearer – absolutely no time had elapsed since I last was there – despite these experiences actually being separated by some 8 months. Now, there is much more than this, this is just by way of an introduction – it was not just times that I have smoked Salvia. My awareness was now in a place that I have popped into during the whole of my life – from my earliest childhood years right up until today, I have gone from this world of time here, and jumped through the curtain into that world there. And in that world there - absolutely no time whatsoever has elapsed since the earliest visit I can remember. I found myself there, and I knew that it is home, it is where I really live, it is where we all really live, it is - much more - what we really are. In a general sense I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this world of people and creatures and cultures and history is an utterly tiny and fragmentary moment in eternity. I knew that the ‘I’ who was seeing this, knowing this, is exactly the same ‘I’ everywhere in this world of ours, that we are undeniably one, that this ‘one’ is ‘I’ - we are all exactly the same ‘I’. I also knew that in a greater sense ‘I’ am all, but that as the mere fragmentary ‘I’ which holds together this cosmos that we all find ourselves inhabiting – that this cosmos in its entirety, in its unimaginable complexity and immensity, is still only a fragment of the ‘all’. I knew that knowing all this and more, is just a matter of remembering, of remembering exactly who we are. I knew that the key to this unfolding drama of our lives on this planet here is a great forgetting of our real nature. The Greeks were closer in their whole cosmology with their notion of Gods and Goddesses standing outside time and fixing their attention on creating a stage within which to play with and as mere mortals – than we have ever come to with our 11 dimensional supersymmetrical-superstring reductionism. The keys to our world are the various levels of amnesia that blanket it. As ‘human beings’ we reach the point in awareness where we can begin to open up our memory of our true nature. This is exactly what human beings are – a moment of awareness. The plunge into human history is exactly this process.

I cannot emphasis strongly enough the reality of this experience, it was not fantasy, it was not a formulated theory in response to stimulation. It was as direct an apprehension and perception of actuality as I can ever remember in my whole life. In comparison - daily thinking, perceiving and explaining seems a snail-paced cumbersome crawl through someone else’s dictionary by contrast. There was so little room for speculation and doubt in fact that I was utterly overwhelmed and appalled by the experience. I sat there and tried desperately to deny what I was remembering, I felt like I was deliberately trying to press my face back up against an immense wall and trying to get back home, trying to regain my grip on ‘normal’ life and perception here. I was trying desperately to re-narrow my focus on this tiny little cosmos and life and forget everything that I was seeing. And what is more, I knew that I had done this many times before in this lifetime, and that everyone else has as well – and the remembering time becomes either obliterated behind an impenetrable amnesiac blanket, or relegated to the realm of dimly remembered childhood nightmare, or psychotic break or .. But this time I was going to remember the outlines of my real home, of my real nature, of the timeless ‘self’ behind appearances. Salvia was the agent of my delivery, my guide, perhaps my Goddess in biological disguise. She was telling me something in clear and unmistakable terms – "Here you are, this is what you already know, this is what you keep on bouncing around time and again, wasting your time and energy in this pointless, narcissistic, masturbatory self-obsession. You are actually unlimited, you can become whatever you can consistently imagine. Look at the tiny fragility of your world there, look how it is held together by the will of your fragmentary denizens, look how free-will arises in your creatures, the capacity to choose and to create and to beautify. Look honestly at where you are up to in your creation, look at the disguise you find yourself in now, and start bloody acting on that knowledge, not wondering what went before all the time. Does the world around you need saving – right, get on with it, do your best, create, grow, expand in beauty and truth and joy. Banish the darkness of suffering wherever you can. Make it a game worth playing. You have but a moment at this game, just a brief opportunity to generate a truly beautiful, magical, loving and awesome experience called ‘life’. You know you will be back here before you know it anyway, so get on and appreciate for real your senses and extensions and friendships and loves, and I will see you back here again in just a moment".

I never closed my eyes during this experience. I have retold just a fraction of what occurred and what I knew. My partner was with me, I grabbed for her hand and began to talk with her, holding her, trying to get back here – overwhelmed and frightened, astonished and filled. About one minute here had passed. It is 36 hours ago now and already I know that much is lost. Unusually for Salvia I felt distinctly ‘trippy’ for several hours after this ‘small’ ingestion. I felt distinctly ‘strange’ for over 24 hours. I may never take Salvia D again, but I know she is always there for me if I ever need a reminder of exactly who I am. What a magical and invaluable and ultimate ‘tool’ for the human ‘toolmaker’ and ‘manufacturer of dreams’. I now think that Salvia shows all of us this same truth, and on this occasion, for whatever reason, I was allowed to bring some of that remembering back here with me. Back to just after now where we live – from Now where ‘I’ live in all of ‘my’ mysterious, unimaginable majesty. Salvia allowed me to avoid the usual amnesia that almost always follows this remembering. For that I am truly grateful…