I'm not sure where to begin so I'll just get into it.
I've been obsessed with using drugs as a means to enlightenment for about 6 years now, ever since my first MDMA trip (which could be said to be my first A&P event, but I really don't know).
I got MCTB a few months ago. I had never been exposed to this idea of actually observing individual sensations before. I had certainly never intentionally practised looking for them.
I've had a few intense experiences with a drug combination I came up with over the last couple of weeks. I was going to write it up in full on the new Substances board but wanted to wait to see what happened for a while after the experience, first.
The drug combination is as follows:
MXP -- Dissociative, like ketamine but more stimulating and "visual". Low dose required for "holing" (completely "losing" your body, as you would in deep jhana).
LSA -- Psychedelic/entheogen. Precursor to LSD. Naturally occurring in various plants. Consider it "LSD lite" perhaps. LSA, for me, gives the most intense concentration powers imaginable. Effortless access to high jhanas.
I feel the combination has given me access to high jhanas I did not otherwise "earn".
I'm not interested in drugs lectures at this stage, just a diagnosis of what's going on in terms of the Path.
I will talk simply about the two experiences where these drugs were taken together.
The first time was the Friday before last. On this trip I found myself in the "Formless Realm". Everything was vibrations. I was moving forward on a sea of vibrations. I have never had anything like this before.
How I got here was to ONLY look for a "sense of self". So I felt my sense of self. Then noticing those sensations, I would move to the sense of self which appeared to be watching those initial sensations. Then move to THAT sense of self. Sooner or later I was moving between sensations of "sense of self" at a rate of literally DOZENS per second. At this point, everything exploded into a sea of just vibrations. I saw formations, just as described in the book. I kept with it. Suddenly, I saw a figure looking back at me. Then that doughnut thing described in the book. Then a moment of nothingness (a gap) and reality came back in.
I remembered reading about all of this in the book. I was still in the formless realm. I tested my sense of agency by invoking the sense of self, saying "I". It went "I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I" and spread out into infinity as waves, as did any body sensation attempting to coalesce into a "self". I continued testing it several times to see if it had "stuck" and got the same result.
After all of this, I was still evidently tripping balls but felt fine, got up, went to the toilet, then just went to sleep as I was pretty exhausted. I had a great sleep.
I was in two minds about whether this was a Fruition or not. I felt what I saw -- the face looking back at me, and the doughnut, and the "gap" -- may have been "scripted" from having read about it in the book.
I had some "cycling" in the week, with a pretty clear Disgust phase (during which I made some rather disparaging remarks in the DhO logo thread to Megan and John -- sorry about that!).
Because of my doubt about whether this was a real Fruition, I endeavoured to repeat it the following Friday (i.e. the Friday just gone). I took the combo again and just tried to repeat what I did exactly -- ONLY going after the sense of self.
I did not get Formless Realms this time. However, I did not let that deter me, and just kept going after the sense of self. Suddenly, without warning, at the end of one of the out breaths, there was another "gap". It was like the out breath went on forever with a gap at the end. When I came back, the entire inside of my body felt "empty". Completely empty, like something had just been hosed out of it. The feeling was one of being "clean". Yet not entirely clean -- not perfectly clean. But like 90% of dirt had been washed off me. I felt very, very transparent.
I got up, and my posture tightness in my arms and back (which I've been working on for about 3 years) suddenly popped open and felt fine. It was like the Knot of Perception and the Knot of Posture were directly linked: untying one untied the other. This posture freedom has remained since then.
I went out the following night and was able to detect a sense of self forming in response to any input, and saw thoughts coming together from sensations, and could watch them and have them break up by consciously making them "flicker". It was also like whatever I thought would come true "out there" in "reality". Synchronicities started picking up pace massively -- people I had thought about earlier in the night would just appear, I would think a word and see it written on a sign the next second, I "felt" what people were about to say and do just as they did it, and a whole load of other stuff that just went on and on and on like this. It's like there was no "time" at any point, just NOW, and I was completely connected to and within NOW with seemingly little border around me.
I did something very nice for an owner of a charity I spontaneously met while at her bar, which I did not even know existed until then, and which was entirely staffed by volunteers. Her bar was amusingly called Ego -- I shit you not! I showed her how to get it onto Google Maps, which I'd done for another business the day before, and offered any web help to her for free. She gave me a warm hug at the end. This was all on autopilot. I remember thinking at the time, "I will use this new way of being for good."
I also gave a taxi driver some life-changing advice regarding career path which he excitedly wrote down. I remembered thinking at the time that these acts were entirely causal and I could not take credit for them in any way, and feelings of even wanting to take credit just arose and passed and I did not latch onto them -- they just appeared as part of the flow of this whole thing. Previously when I have had such nights as a result of practice or whatever I have become very egoic and thinking I was Jesus or something; this time it was just innately "normal".
Everything was flickering. I barely had any verbal thoughts all night. The sensations that would ordinarily become verbal thoughts would just come and go without forming a "self". This continued the next day to an extent but it was becoming exhausting to be frank -- I still had to consciously make things flicker in order not to infer a sense of self from sensations.
So I then slept for like 2 days (half of Sunday, almost all of Monday). And felt like crap thenceforth. Things are still flickering, and I've just had enough of it now. When I close my eyes, they are in REM with lights flickering the whole time.
When things "flicker", are the eyes supposed to move?? My eyes have been moving by themselves in this flickering pattern practically the whole of the last 4 days. It's given me headaches and I'm sick of it now.
I was sure on the Saturday night (when I was out) I had had a Fruition and got First Path, and texted two of my buddies who are aware of the Path. It was not bragging, either, but felt very much matter of fact. Nothing felt egoic.
Now all the drugs are filtering out of my system, I feel pretty blah, consciously making things flicker to dissolve the sense of self is just feeling like massive hard work, and I have doubts cast on whether I got First Path or whatever at all.
I am completely sick of practising, and I've fallen behind with my work a LOT over the last week, and missed my first deadline in history. I just want things to be back to "normal" now and stop flickering, and stop thinking about this whole fucking thing for a while.
So, what the hell happened, and what do I do now?