A visitor from beyond.

[PowerMad]

I recently had an extremely detailed dream in which the spirit of a certain plant (at least that's who I believed it was) visited me.

First of all, I try my best to become as spiritually aware as I can... and one method of doing so is to partake in something known as Salvia Divinorum. I do not condone the use of drugs. In fact, this particular plant is so intense that I highly recommend you do NOT use it unless you know full well what you're getting into. Anyway, this plant tends to remove you from reality and put you in a very physical other reality that seems like the 'true' reality. It's like visiting another dimension, and you will truthfully believe you are there, and that you've left normalcy behind forever. On to the dream.

The dream started with a school program for students to study abroad in various oriental countries of our choosing. I, along with several others, traveled to China to study among the monks (Whether they were Buddhist or not, I have no idea). However, after arriving, many students came to find that the monks would use certain hallucinogenic drugs in a religious, spiritual context to achieve personal enlightenment. Among these was the drug Salvia. Several of the students got very excited, claiming that they had never even heard of Salvia, so they would 'definitely have to try it.'

After trying this plant myself, I grew worried for them. I began trying to talk them out of it, recalling how it is the most unpleasant sensation I've personally ever experienced in my life...and that while worth it, it is not the kind of thing you take without any knowledge. That's asking for trouble.

However, one of the monks disagreed with me. He was roughly the same age as myself, a young adult in his twenties, but his more distinctive features were that he was entirely bald by choice, and his eyes had a radiant white light to them. It was the most pure white I've ever seen, almost holy looking. I also got the notion that he either was, represented, or was the voice of the spirit of Salvia (an incredibly knowledgeable entity quite possibly possessing the knowledge of the universe). Anyway, he started talking to me about Salvia, and how it was 'lots of fun'. I vehemently disagreed, to which he replied with, "But look at what you can learn from it!" and began to distort reality directly in front of him. He seemed to create a white ball of energy that functioned similar to a black hole, sucking in everything and at his will spitting it back out to its proper place.

After this, the dream takes a more fantasy-based turn with me befriending a gigantic skeleton and jumping hundreds to thousands of feet high in the air around the world with him. Eventually the world took notice and began hunting us down, fearing my friend. I decided that we needed to find a place to hide, and took it upon myself to kill anyone that tried to hurt him or discover our hiding place. I remember only one actual killing where I stabbed a man in the side, and then I woke up.


Sorry for dumping all of that on there....nice big wall of text. But it feels good just to get it off the chest, even if nobody has a clue what I'm talking about. Thanks in advance to any attempted interpretation, and I fully understand if none is received.

[Tony Crisp]

Well Powermad – I have been initiated into several of the great traditions, sometimes using hallucinogens, and your dream shows you have not been to anywhere near enlightenment, but seem to be quite lost. But I say this not as a criticism but as a help. You see, such drugs release or make less effective your usual barrier between your waking self and the unconscious or superconscious – the source of dreams. Drugs such as LSD, cannabis, psilocybin, mescaline, peyote and opium, can produce hallucinations. This is sometimes because they allow the dream process to break through into consciousness with less intervention.

If this occurs without warning it can be very disturbing. The very real dangers are that unconscious content, which in ordinary dreaming breaks through a threshold in a regulated way, emerges with less regulation, and without the safety factor of calling it a dream. Fears, paranoid feelings, past traumas, can emerge into the consciousness of an individual who has no skill in handling such dangerous forces.

Because the propensity of the unconscious is to create images, an area of emotion might emerge as an image such as the devil, or other threatening forces. Such images and the power they contain, not being integrated in a proper therapeutic setting, may haunt the individual, perhaps for years. Even at a much milder level, such as happening when smoking pot, elements of the unconscious will emerge and disrupt the persons ability to appraise reality and make judgements. Unacknowledged fears may lead the drug user to rationalise their reasons for avoiding social activity or the world of work.

I am not suggesting one should avoid using such aids. If you read the literature on LSD Psychotherapy you will see they are wonderful healing agents – when used with the right tools to deal with what is released.

Tony