Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Metaphysical
Erasmo Calzadilla
HAVANA TIMES — This is another post about drugs. No, don’t raise your eyebrows or huff. I’ll be raising the issue at least until they’re legalized and decent information on them can be found in bookstores and libraries here.
For a change, I want to share an adventure that I experienced while riding on the back of magic mushrooms.
The first time I tried a little mushroom, I was captivated with the delights of a slightly heightened alertness.
Obviously I wanted more after that – more enjoyment, more self-knowledge, more wisdom, less fear and more power in the best sense of the word. That was the ambition that led me to repeatedly cross the line.
Entheogens are not usually life threatening, and crossing the line doesn’t mean poisoning the body until leaving it lifeless. Instead, it’s about visiting metaphysical realms for which one isn’t prepared.
Avoid it if you don’t want to understand, “in the flesh,” the painful sense of the word “sacrilege.”
This happened to me, unprepared due to the lack of good advice. Society sees drugs as taboo, so it’s extremely difficult to find information about them that’s not biased.
Drugs are either demonized (by the official media) or glorified in certain cultural environments.
Getting to the point…
On one of those times stepping over the line, I took a detour and you know who I ran into…? well, yes, God himself – in person. By the way, he’s nothing like he’s made out to be.
Do you want to know what he looks like? Then keep reading, so no one can fool you.
The first thing to point out in a description of the Supreme Being is that we can’t refer to him in the third person. God is oneself. He’s me, he’s you and he’s anyone who reaches that state, and during the time it lasts.
I didn’t talk, since with him I didn’t even contemplate his divine perfection. Instead, I embodied his drama, which is serious. God is involved in a tremendous drama (or is it a tragedy?).
His problem is his lucidity. God knows, without having the slightest doubt that his destiny is to be alone forever, and that’s simply unbearable to him.
He would prefer to die if that were an option, he would accept the pleasure of death, but it’s forbidden to him. But he has a useful remedy: sleep.
When God falls asleep from his essence sprout, scattered, those contrary to him dancing in the theater of life, and for a while God forgets himself and his loneliness.
But not even in the house of God does happiness last long, because from time to time some ruined or enlightened human being reaches supreme lucidity. And then, through this, God awakes, remembers his destiny, and his agony is reborn.
Knowing God has changed my life for the better, but I’ll do everything possible not to be in his shoes. From now on, I’m only taking touristic excursions seasoned with small thrills foreseen by the guide.
For me, God has taken many forms: the furry dynosaur-like character in “South Park,” the depictions of Zeus and Hera in the 1963 film “Clash of the Titans,” (I especially like how the gods manipulate people, like pieces on a chessboard!) For me, God–or The Gods–definitely exist in the third person, or as multiple personalities. Alas! He–or They–have the same endearing faults as our own selves–because, well, they ARE our own selves, writ large!
Erasmo, I have had the same experience. When we think we do not know what we are going to think next, so why do we think the words of others are separate from our own? We are all one, God’s dream.
Erasmo, good article. Thanks.
Do you know the Rubiayat of Omar Khayyam? I don’t know if it is available in the Spanish-language, but there is a great translation in English. Cheers.