Metaphysics/Meta-linguistics of a Salvia Experience

For a while now, I've wanted to write about what was possibly my most robust psychedelic experience and what I make of it as a philosopher. I was waiting until I figured out an interpretation and implications that were solid and definitive — but in truth, I think that's never going to happen.

I should first point out that the substance I used was not illegal when I had this experience. As a general rule, I'd prefer to change (or altogether remove) an unjust law rather than break it — and I'd encourage others to consider doing the same: Remember, some forms of disobedience support the status quo. As for the organizations trying to make these changes, that's a discussion for another day.

Some years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I managed to acquire some Salvia divinorum — Diviner's Sage — extract. Salvia wasn't the first psychoactive drug I'd experienced. Still, this one filled me with a sense of caution, foreboding or, for want of a better word, gravity. I'd read up on it online, done my homework on possible dosages and effects, and had tried a little — just enough to feel it.

Image by Ken_Lecoq

What I couldn't seem to do was psych myself up enough to take a 'breakthrough' dose. Not, at least, until I staggered home one night from a party. Full of beer-fuelled courage & lack of caution, I got my insomniac flatmate to act as a sitter, grabbed the improvised smoking implement, and said: "Let's do this!"

The mechanics of smoking that much salvia extract in a short time is un-edifying; my friend kept packing his bong with it and handing it to me until it hit me.

After the 5th or 6th, I handed it back to him and lay down on the floor as reality quickly dissolved in a tessellating shower of brassy squarish-fractal sparks.

I found myself, disembodied, in a place of vaguely undulating, golden, and somewhat foggy glowing light. There wasn't anyone else there, but I didn't feel as if I were alone — though I say 'I' with some reservation. I don't think it was ego-death, more just that there was no room to consider my self-identity: like if you're surfing a big wave, you aren't thinking about what it means to be 'you' (or I don't, at least).

Looking across the fields of light, I felt an instinctive understanding that what I perceived as distance in this place was a separation in time; that elsewhere and else-when were similar or interchangeable. I took this as the perspective that one might have if your consciousness was made of disembodied light. This experience wasn't an abstraction; it felt overwhelmingly realistic and all-encompassing.

It might not sound like much compared to self-replicating machine elves and serpent spirits, but the strength and immediacy of what I felt I knew was extreme. I understood where I was and how this related to my everyday waking life, deeply and fully. I understood the light because I was the light, and for a moment, the tesseract of spacetime made sense.

I didn't recall time passing, but soon enough, the soft golden light bled away, and I re-joined everyday reality laying on my friend's floor. From his perspective, I'd been there for some minutes mumbling, 'time is a vector' or something like that. I put myself to bed, not at all looking forward to integrating this experience whilst hungover. Side note: I felt like that plant had psychologically kicked my ass for the next few days, and deservedly so. If you are lucky enough to be somewhere where it's legal, do try to treat it with a bit more respect than I did.

What to make of this experience, however? Did the plant show me some metaphysical truth? I'm not sure. And even if it did, I'm not sure what to say about it.

My interpretation of what was going on tracked an idea from one of my favourite books: Last Legends of Earth, by A.A. Attanasio. In this book (and the whole series), Attanasio presents a dramatization of consciousness, karma, reincarnation and the afterlife via some very entertaining speculation. Namely, that the electromagnetic radiation from our nervous systems radiates into space during our lifetimes, and stays there forever, expanding into the void at the speed of light, carrying our consciousness with it once it's free of our material bodies. Dead characters in these books even describe the vantage point of their mode of existence as being in the 'fields of light'.

Does this mean I just imagined an illustration of an idea I found both fascinating and appealing? I can neither confirm nor deny the truth of what I saw. (For what it's worth, Attanasio, who was nice enough to correspond with me at length about metaphysics via email, is quite circumspect on whether or not he believes his dramatic cosmology.) I'm not too worried that I drew from the experience and framework I had to interpret what happened because that's what we always do — even with our everyday mundane experiences.

A big part of the difficulty here is fitting something into language where there are no appropriate causal linkages between what I experienced and the words I have at my disposal. There's usually a certain kind of relationship between our terms and the world, but a breakthrough psychedelic experience tears this relationship down — temporarily at least.

Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "What can be shown cannot be said" — things that we can't form into sensible and sayable propositions can only be shown. He put concepts like the logical form of the world (in its most total sense), ethics, metaphysics, and 'the mystical' into this category of not-sayable things.

I can't entirely agree with everything Wittgenstein puts in the unsayable category. But when it comes to experiences of this nature, I think he's on the money. I can't tell you what I saw because the experience has no connection to the words I currently have. More than that, if Wittgenstein is correct, this isn't a matter of finding better words — there are some places where language cannot go. Thus, I can paint a picture for you using words, but no words can interpret the relationship between this picture and what actually happened.

Though I'm not new to philosophy, my ability to philosophically analyse these experiences is a work in progress. So this isn't as good as something written by Peter Sjöstedt-H or William James. For both writing and philosophy, it's practice rather than aspiration that leads to improvement. Nonetheless, I hope it's given you all something to think about -I certainly exercised my brain writing it!

An earlier version of this post was originally published at steemit.com on February 5, 2018.