Experience:2.5g Psilocybe Cubensis B+ strain - epiphany of nondualistic reality

• Age: 49
• Sex: M
• Height: 5'5"
• Weight: 195 lb
• Date: 09/2021
• Location: USA / New England

Grew the Psilocybe Cubensis myself. Previously tried a 1g dose as a trial, one week earlier, which was pleasant and interesting but nothing like the 2.5g dose. No previous experience with psychadelics. The setting was my home; I was comfortable and queued up music shuffled with Interstellar (Hans Zimmer), Yann Tiersen and Ludovico Einaudi. I weighed the dried shrooms on a digital scale, chopped them up, then added them to an herbal tea and added a squirt of lemon juice. I wore an eyeshade and used AirPods to listen to the music and sat in a comfortable chair.

Before the session I thought about some of the ideas I wanted to work with. One was that I asked myself why I do things to sabotage myself. Another is that I wanted to know my role and connection to the future.

After about 40 minutes I could start feeling the effect. Initially it was just a spatial distortion.

I realized that I had never listened to music in this way before. The instruments had an incredible clarity and I was hearing things I felt I wouldn't normally notice. But it was more than that: each piece (which was instrumental) was as if it had its own narrative and even the individual instruments were like "teachers" in the music. Each piece had its own personality and set of lessons.

After sitting in the comfy chair for a bit I started feeling a bit uncomfortable, like breathing was weird. The rational part of my mind told me to ignore that because I knew I could breathe fine, but I wanted to feel more comfortable so I went to my bed and hugged a pillow as I kept listening to the music.

The music was everything and I had some closed-eye visual effects, mostly random patterns. But sometimes I saw faces in the darkness (they were ephemeral and indistinct, barely dreamlike).

One of these faces was a being. It was Death. I said that I wasn't afraid of Death. But the answer was that I SHOULD be afraid of it. And that the fear could be a strength. That it was normal. That I shouldn't pretend not to fear it, that it is completely human. It told me I should be careful about doing things that are self-destructive or overly dangerous.

I knew I had been drinking a bit much recently. I asked why. Something told me that it was because I wanted to dampen the world, I was feeling overwhelmed, and I wasn't finding the beauty that was present in every moment.

I knew this communication was from my own subconscious. It told me not to take everything I'm everything too seriously. This personification of my own subconscious seemed to be simultaneously pragmatic but also not too full of itself.

Subject matter continued to evolve as I listened to the music which was indescribably profound.

After one of the pieces of music the audience cheered. The cheering seemed to last forever and ever. A thought in my head was "it is not about the celebration." For a moment I resented that the cheering/celebration was interrupting the music. But then an additional thought was "but it is ALSO about the celebration." The thought occurred to me that the celebration which was the connection of our shared humanity was also important.

I started thinking in metaphors. The musical instruments were metaphors. It was like I could understand the intention and feelings the musicians brought to the pieces. I was experiencing metaphors all around me.

Another idea came to me: that the world is not about opposites. We are not in a dualistic universe. What some people call "cognitive dissonance" is not about containing opposite ideas, but compatible ideas. In my mind I called this "concurrent realities." I knew that if I could see more things as a whole, with these concurrent realities all together, it would be a powerful way to understand existence.

I went back to my comfy chair. I removed my eyeshades. Over the bed in my bedroom is a painting. I saw it in a new way that I never had before; the painting is of a scene from the desert with standing rocks and a picture of the moon on one side and the sun on the other. But when I looked at it, it seemed as if the foreground rocks stood out from the background in a way I had never noticed before, like their edges were stronger and more three-dimensional. I saw faces in the rocks. And the clouds/sky over them in the image seemed to flow very subtly. But this is the important part... the visual weirdness wasn't what was important. I could see the painting as a metaphor. It was the non-dual "concurrent realities" idea again -- the sun and moon together were not opposites, they both exist simultaneously.

I continued to think about concurrent realities for a while.

Thoughts of Death again: that Death is to be feared. And also NOT to be feared. It was another concurrent reality.

The visual effects seemed to tone down after a couple hours.

I made a cup of coffee and for the rest of the time I felt a bit discombobulated and slightly euphoric but the deep experience was past.

Later that night I had dinner and poured one glass of wine. I drank it, trying to connect with it and be in the moment with it. Normally I'd drink half a bottle (at least) but only felt like drinking the one. I felt like I was appreciating it in a new way.

• Internal hallucinations
• Pattern recognition enhancement
• Depth perception distortions
• Flowing
• Increased music appreciation
• Thought connectivity
• Thought organization
• Introspection
• Unity and interconnectedness
• Perception of interdependent opposite
• Conceptual thinking