~~*  Pilgrimage to the Golden City-Page 2  *~~

~~*Colors, Sounds and Shapes*~~

Someone put a Beatles album on and things really began to deepen. My physical senses were now transcendentally heightened, blurring and cross-circuiting in my mind. The music coming out of the stereo player became a mixture of sound and color. I was able to see the sound, I reasoned. Many other such phenomena were taking place, too numerous to give account of here. It had been 18 hours since I had ingested the drug and I still had not arrived at the place it was taking me.

Soon, my sense of consciousness had slipped altogether out of the realm of physical awareness into a place difficult to describe. I sat in blue, where only the outline of my body could be seen. There were no objects to be seen, no up or down (aside from the orientation of myself), nothing to stand or lean on, I was suspended in blue. I had become transparent and the ethereal outline of my body was burning with blue flames. There were no cognitive thought processes, only conscious awareness. How to describe this abstract event is difficult, but important. They have deep ramifications in the future of this odyssey.

Leaving the blue fire, I emerged into the strange experience of passing through the colors of the rainbow as I had been in the blue. It seemed each color level had it's own unique symbols or mystery connected to it. Each color had a level of consciousness and an experience bound up in it.

Soon I burst into a realm of blinding light. As I had passed through the rainbow colors, now I was rapidly breaking through levels of intense white light. Brighter and brighter, faster and faster went the pace. Then in blinding light before me, sat a golden Buddha in the yogic lotus posture. Having taken in the sight in a milli-second, I burst past it into a realm of translucent bliss. With ever-increasing velocity I passed through transparent veils, too numerous for me to recount; transcendent light speed into what seemed to be vast cosmic recesses.

When the momentum became unbearable, I suddenly burst into an abrupt halt. Now, before my consciousness appeared a large transparent scintillating sphere. It was divided into four quarters and seemed to quiver with an animation source unknown to me. I saw the sphere in a realm of seemingly unending blazing light. There I remained for some unknown period of time. From the moment I slipped from consciousness of my physical surroundings to this point, I was in a state of thoughtless awareness. I was an observer.

In a flash I found myself sitting in the room again. Instantly I had come down from an altered state of consciousness to a normal frame of mind. What had happened to me? It was morning the next day already. The drugged state had captured an entire day of my life. It came and went but its influence remained. Colors, sounds and shapes more dazzling and inspiring than anything that had ever entered my imagination compelled me on to further pursue spiritual life.

~~* From Being a Warrior to Becoming a Flower Child *~~

Had I stumbled across the answer to my utopian dreams? Was it really as simple as dropping a hit of acid or some other mind-bending drug? Apparently an entire generation of people believed it was so. I met a few of Steve's friends who were heading out to Haight-Ashbury in the San Francisco Bay area. "Come along. We've got room in the car."

In a matter of hours I was swept along with an entire generation to become a "flower child". No more evil. No more violence or war. Peace, love and joy were the order of the day. Every one was talking about fulfilling utopian dreams. Commune after commune that we visited along the way, accommodated this New Age euphoria. Drugs flowed like candy everywhere. Food we had in abundance. Relationships came and went according to the drift of the moment.

The trek west seemed to intensify some vague idea that the world could be changed for the better. There were good people out there with dreams and hopes just like mine. The realms of spirit could be opened with the swallow of a pill. Although no aspect of the counter-culture escaped its impact on my life, it was the mysteries of the new realms of spiritual and psychic activity that engulfed my attention.

In San Francisco there were hundreds of people milling around the streets that surrounded the mecca of flower children. One need only open his mouth and in would go some consciousness-altering capsule or pill. The streets were filled with people of all types, begging for food or spare change.

Being impelled to enter the realms of light and glory once again, I took many drugs in a short period of time. These intense chemicals soon made a shambles of my mental faculties and ability to function. At one point a movie was being filmed at a local music hall( The Fillmore ). Having heard about it I quickly arrived to see the fantastic light show that was supposed to be there. In a short time someone handed me five double hits of Orange Wedge STP, the drug I had taken back on the New Jersey coast. Then someone else handed me some Hawaiian wood rose seeds. I ate them all. In a matter of minutes I began to realize that I was going to lose consciousness. This time I didn't have the sense that it was going to go well.

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