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The Secret of Smoked Salvia divinorum |
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Written by Michael S. Smith
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Tuesday, 12 August 1997 |
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Page 2 of 3
I've always required of other participants/observers that they be completely still so as to cause absolutely no noise. During the experience a new landscape is opened up, one without borders, and space can appear to go on infinitely. Usually this landscape is one that can shift from one scene to the next without apparent provocation and which resembles a rapid succession of unconscious material forcefully trying to push itself into conscious awareness. If someone makes a noise or speaks the vision may be lost or altered since the noise, and where it is located in space, can still be comprehended by the conscious and rational mind. This causes the mind of the experimenter, which can be quite conscious of two realities at once, to become aware of the inconsistency between these realities, and this can, and in my case usually does, disrupt the experience.
What the motionless body allows the mind to do is to slip deeper into the 3 dimensional nature of the vision. If the body is moved the vision will often alter or slip away. In some way the physical body defines the inner landscapes of the vision. My only way to explain this is to say that the conscious rational mind retains awareness of consensus reality while under the influence of Salvia. Since Salvia creates a non-consensus reality body movement causes a dichotomy of awareness which can cause the mind to attempt a reconciliation between these realities. Consensus reality often wins, causing the vision to dissipate, or at least lose its convincing nature.
This sort of dual awareness is also played out with sight, which may be why many who attempt to feel the effects of Salvia, and have failed to try closing their eyes, cannot. By having ones eyes open the mind appears to be unconsciously forced to recognize one reality over the next and therefore cannot fall deeply into the full Salvia experience. Of course this dichotomy of forces appears to be overcome depending on how much is smoked, and obviously extracted Salvinorin-A forces consensus reality to the wayside.
The main physical effects that I have noticed are a feeling of a rise of body temperature and a slight tightening of the muscles, especially in the hands. I found that if I consciously focus on relaxing my body during this tensioning that I would be pulled further into the vision. This fits into my theory of dichotomy. I've also found that after the main effects have worn off short term memory may be slightly impaired. For example, I kept forgetting about my lit cigarette in the ashtray. I would lay it down and then, in what appeared a couple minutes, it would be completely burned down to the filter.
One may also notice an inability to recall many of the aspects of the vision and may suffer from incoherent speech. The incoherent speech is very important in attempting to interpret the experience. Just as in Freudian dream psychoanalysis the mind make attempts to fill in the blanks of the vision with coherent structure, basically by adding material to make the vision make sense. But the visions in themselves are unconscious material coming up to a conscious level and this is very difficult to fully interpret.
When a participant comes down from the experience with me I remain completely silent, allowing the partaker to speak freely without my interjections or my attempts to make sense of what is being said. Let them freely speak, without the criticism of the all to common laughter, and try to form a new mental picture from remembered material. Let them have enough quiet time to digest what has happened so that they might come to their own personal understanding.
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