Metaphors for Transcendental Experiences

Metaphors for Transcendental Experiences
By Rendi Case

Psychedelic and mystical experiences often seem difficult if not impossible to express to others in a way that makes sense to them and that conveys the essence of what is experienced. It seems that, more often than not, the deeper and more meaningful the experiences are the most difficult to express or are impossible to express.
Sometimes these experiences are so unimaginable that one cannot even remember them soon after they are experienced. One is often left with the sense that one understood the deepest secrets of existence but that it slipped through your fingers like water and that once back in the usual state of consciousness, one couldn’t even begin to comprehend or remember what just happened. Time only erodes the profundity of the experience and it fades into incomprehension and vagueness.
Sometimes one can remember the experience but cannot express it to others in any meaningful way. Often, however, one still feels the need to try. It seems most difficult to express such experiences to those who have had no such experiences themselves.
Throughout history, many people who have had exceptionally powerful experiences with the ineffable have attempted to put these experiences into words to express their experiences with others. Many have been dismissed as crazy, killed, locked up with other “crazy” people, ignored or otherwise misunderstood. A few have been hailed as prophets or messiahs.
Perhaps the best attempts at expressing the inexpressible have been metaphors and allegories. Two examples that come to mind are Plato's allegory of the cave (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_allegory_of_the_cave) and Edwin A. Abbott’s story Flatland (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland).
I have often found myself groping in feeble attempts to make my experiences with meditation and psychedelics understandable to others in some sense. Most of the time, the important essence of what I would like to express never reaches the understanding of another because no explanation is sufficient unless they themselves have had such experiences in which case no explanation is necessary.
I have, however, found partial success with some people through the use of certain metaphors. Allow me to give an example.
With cannabis, some people seem to only experience dopiness and altered but lessened awareness. I can understand what this is like because this is what alcohol does to me. For others, cannabis opens up a much wider and more vibrant spectrum of thought and creativity. This is what cannabis does for me. It is hard for the first group to understand what the second group experiences through cannabis.
One metaphor I use is that of color and color-blindness…
Think about what it would be like if you have always been completely color blind and without a sense of smell. You only know light and shadow. Everything has always been black, white and shades of gray and you couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like to have a sense of smell. Now imagine that something could allow you to see in full color and to be able to smell the endless variety of scents in the world. This is somewhat parallel to what I experience when I augment my awareness with cannabis.
Now try this metaphor on for size; imagine you are an android. You are self-aware, intelligent and know many things but have never experienced emotions or pleasure. Reason is the extent of your awareness. Now imagine that you take something that floods you with all the emotions that you have never been able to feel before.
How about this one; you grew up in a society that knows no music. You have never hummed a tune nor heard a melody. You’ve never thought of rhythm as something that one could listen to for enjoyment. To you rhythm is just repeated sound or motion – something from a machine, or the pace of someone walking. Now imagine that a band of minstrels comes to town and exposes you to exquisite music. You are moved to laughter and tears and your heart overflows with irrational emotional response to this newfound beauty. Since we are using this metaphor, imagine what it would then be like if the local authorities drive the minstrels away because they are evil or insane and then lock up any town-folk that try to follow the minstrels.
Allow me to give another example; I once went through a period of regular meditation. A few months passed before I even got past the boredom stage. However, after some time a whole new world opened up. I was moved to spontaneous laughter and tears. After that an inexpressible sense of deep calm and peace filled me with wholeness and satisfaction. I am, however, at a loss for words to express this sufficiently to others. Perhaps the following metaphor may give you a hint at what I experienced with meditation. Imagine what it would be like to be a crazed hyperactive monkey with severe attention deficit / hyperactive disorder. You jump from one thing to the next without contemplating, relaxing or enjoying life. One second you are in a rage, the next terror, then greed, then disgust. From the moment you awake to the moment you fall asleep, you never stop the hyperactivity and you never know concentration or contemplation. There is no calm, there is no peace.
Now imagine that you one day force yourself to “sit still, shut up and get out” as Aleister Crowley put it or to “turn on, tune in and drop out” as Timothy Leary used to say. This is intensely difficult for you to do but after months of endurance you one day are filled with deep profound peace and quiet. You sit calmly in a new blissful and wide-open awareness. Since we are using this metaphor, also try to imagine what it would be like to make this experience understandable to the other crazed monkeys.
Are these metaphors giving you any sense of the inexpressible experiences that many feel at a loss to express? I hope so because now we will try to use a metaphor to grasp the full-on psychedelic experience.
Imagine you are completely enwrapped in darkness. You have no sense of sight or sound. Neither do you have any sense of taste or smell. You have no concept of these senses and never had. You don’t even suspect that these could exist and would not be able to imagine them if you did. The only sense that you have is that of touch. All you feel is a sense of secure warmth and comfort.
You have no sense of time for you cannot remember a beginning nor can you apprehend an end. You don’t even have a concept of change because all seems to be ever the same. Eternity is a given.
You have no sense or concept of individuality. You don’t even think thoughts. Homogeny is the totality of your experience.
Then a miraculous change occurs.
You are roused from your slumbering unconsciousness. Alarming change occurs faster than you can process. Each passing moment brings the awareness of how little you were aware of just a moment before. Suddenly you are aware that you exist and that something is happening. There is a tremendous and irresistible force pulling you from your familiar state, the only one you have ever experienced, into something you cannot begin to comprehend in the slightest.
There is blinding light. You have a sense of sight and it is overloaded. There are many sounds. You have never heard before and no you know not what to make of this new sense. There is smell, taste, and unimaginable changes in what you feel with your awakened sense of touch.
Perhaps this induces pure terror and anguish and you scream with a voice you never knew you could have. Perhaps the confusion and wonder leaves you wide eyed and amazed.
There are colors, shapes, warmth, cold and other sensations that mystify you. There are strange things or beings that move, make sounds and touch you. Some seem to be hard, square, cold and they flash and beep. Others seem softer, warmer and move more. They touch you, move you, make incomprehensible sounds in your direction and do many inconceivable things that you cannot understand.
It all happens so fast and it is all so overwhelming that it just flows by faster than you can assimilate. Something is holding you in a warm embrace but it is different than the warmth and envelopment you experienced before. What is happening? You know not. You still can’t even think.
Soon you get sleepy. Darkness returns, as does the lack of awareness and sense impression. You fall deeply asleep. Perhaps you dream for the first time. Maybe these dreams are an abstract mixture of the amazing sensations that flooded you in your new experience being. For the most part, however, you dwell in darkness, oneness, unconsciousness. Eternity and oblivion return.
Then it happens again. You rise from unconsciousness to semi-consciousness to full awareness again. You open your eyes. You are again flooded with light, colors, sights, sounds, taste, smell and touch. There is awareness and an awareness of your own awareness – consciousness. Again bizarre events happen, each one of them new and incomprehensible.
Eventually you fall back asleep.
Eventually you reawaken.
This happens again and again. Each time you awaken you are flooded with novelty and weirdness. However, over time and repeated exposure you develop an ability to assimilate and process the sensory overload into something abstract yet somewhat familiar. You associate some sensations with certain feelings. Every sensation and experience is new and different but some are similar to others and you begin to differentiate. A sense of memory and expectation develops and there is a sense of understanding. Certain sounds that come from certain things become familiar and take on meaning.
You make sounds yourself. You move your body, reach for things, touch things, look, listen and learn.
Now imagine that you somehow return to the state you were in before all of these new experiences occurred. You are in warm undifferentiated darkness. Imagine that you retained both awareness and a memory of those wondrous experiences.
Now imagine that somehow you have a telepathic connection with other beings such as yourself. These beings have never had the experience you have had. All they know is the undifferentiated experience that you have returned to. Your experiences of the world were so amazing and wonderful that you feel the need to try to express them to the others.
How could you do such a thing? You hardly understand those experiences yourself. How could you possibly explain them to others? How could they even begin to understand what you would try to communicate if you knew how to do so? How could you explain light, shadow and colors to one who has no concept of sight? How could you explain the wonders of sound and music to one who has no experience with hearing? How could you explain the endless variety of the qualities of touch to one who has only known the same comfortable ones and warmth for their entire existence?
Soon you would come to realize that these experiences are to at all expressible to those who have had no such experiences themselves. Perhaps you would encourage them to have such an experience so that they could understand what you cannot communicate to them. It is likely that most of them would decline. After all, your attempts at explanation just seem like the insane babble of a delusional fool.
You had a crazy dream. It makes no sense. Go back to sleep and forget it.
Do you accept and obey? Do you simply forget it and return to blissful ignorance? Or do you try for another experience? Do you make further attempts at understanding?
Perhaps you find others who have had similar experiences. It still seems impossible to explain your experiences – even to each other – but you get a sense that you have had similar experiences and share a sense of wonder and amazement at the experiences you wish you could explain. You also share a sense that these experiences are important, that they are worth having, and that further experience is important or at least desirable.
Now imagine that those who have never had these experiences decide that you who have had these experiences are doing something wrong. These experiences are not worth having. They are crazy and even dangerous. You and the others who seek these experiences are all crazy and must be stopped. Those who have not had these experiences do everything they can to prevent you and others like you from having any more of these experiences. They threaten to trap you in painful isolation if you continue to have these experiences.
If you truly have an understanding of the essence of what I am attempting to convey through these metaphors than you have some understanding of what it feels like to have profound life-changing experiences with meditation and/or psychedelics, the frustration over the futility of making these experiences understandable to others and the injustice of the violation of the fundamental and inalienable right to have the experiences you choose to have.
No one – not kings, popes, presidents or other tyrants, not lawmakers, judges or employers, not teachers, parents or police can justifiably control your consciousness or your soul. Don’t hide, don’t be quiet, but don’t martyr yourself either. Do not obey. Resist and refuse all authority but your own self. Peace, Love and Understanding.