First Perspective — The Divine Forest

Observing the forest directly, I could see, smell, taste, feel and hear like a normal person. The forest was like a magical journey and yet it was the journey’s end at the same time. For some reason, it felt pure and pious. If there is heaven, it could have been a part of it. Birds, leaves, all the greenery in the forest were exhilarating. It felt like satisfying a long-held craving, for a place that was always there at the back of my head. Like the feeling of satisfaction, when you eat your favorite dessert for the first time.

Second Perspective — The Blue Eyed Self

PC: ANDREIUC88 from SHUTTERSTOCK

This was the observer or the analyzer. He felt like another entity, another person just standing beside me. He was visible like a person in deep thoughts, just staring at me. Or it was me, observing and analyzing a new presence in the forest. He couldn’t decipher the five senses with the same profoundness but I knew he could sense me, the forest, and the external nature of music. He had blue eyes, clear like water. I could have stayed there for a long time. This state is easily achievable by meditating. I had been there earlier but right now it was more tangible like the real world.

Third Perspective — The Cognizant Painting

I dove deeper into the depths of self and was able to view another perspective. It was like viewing the whole scenery: the forest, the source of music as my friends, the birds, the trees, and the two earlier perspectives. It was like watching a painting with its own life. The only difference was that the painting and the perspective were intertwined. The perspective was the painting itself.

Fourth Perspective — The Dimension of Magic

Because of my overactive mind, I pushed my perspective to split myself apart from the painting. Another dimension opened up in my mind. I could move different paintings through this dimension. For example, I could change the scenery to that of a cold mountain, a sunny beach, or anything that could be imagined, and yet the other three perspectives remained the same. This dimension needed nothing from reality and was pure imagination. I had complete control over it. I played around here a bit, enjoying my favorite fictional universes.

Fifth Perspective — The Engine

Now, I was reaching the limits of the complex pattern analysis that our brain does. In simple words, whatever you see and imagine is a complex recognition process in the brain. For example, your eyes take some rudimentary signals from the environment, but your brain visualizes them into objects. You can observe this concept in visual illusions. Even though the signals from the object remain the same, your mind can perceive two different things. E.g., The spinning dancer illusion. Thus, eyes don’t see pictures, ears don’t hear words, or the nose doesn’t smell strawberries, but it’s the brain that recognizes these discrete concepts using raw sensory signals. Using this process, the brain recognizes patterns like the environment, personal reality, mental models, emotions, feelings, etc.

In the fifth perspective, I saw the signals from all the fives senses in its raw form. Sensations of taste, smell, touch, sound, and vision were all just raw signals reaching into my brain. However, the boundary between the perspectives was getting blurred. Both fourth and fifth were holding onto this engine of semantic recognition explained above. The fourth would demand the personalized outcomes from this engine (a beach, mountain, etc.), and the fifth would transform the engine itself into giving modified results.

In Engineering jargon, fourth was a customer and fifth was a developer. For example, if fourth moved through its dimension and was now looking at a painting of mountains, the pattern recognizer (my brain) would have been modified (creating different objects from the same incoming signals). The entire hallucination of the painting of a mountain was the new end result. It’s like teleporting myself to a new place. Remember, one cannot modify signals coming from the five senses. Hence, modifying your brain’s perception is the only way to hallucinate (Note: the word “Hallucination” has been used here to simplify the explanation. The experience pushed the boundaries between hallucination and reality).

In a more simple experiment, you can observe the same concept from the first perspective by manipulating the sounds you hear. If you put a prior of positivity in your brain (being optimistic), the words you will recognize will all have positive meaning for you, and vice versa for pessimism.

Being fifth was a transformative experience. Manipulation of raw signals is too much of a power to behold. The choice of hallucination was at my fingertips. I could ignore signals like pain, hunger, feelings, the need to pee, etc. It showed me a third person view of my body, just like that of a biomechanical machine.

Any machine, even us as Humans, come with predefined limits on exertion. These limits prolong the health of the machine and keep both itself, and the master safe. However, I was filled with the strength to go beyond these preset limits. In a normal state, these limits are unchangeable and automatically imposed. They don’t let us harm ourselves. E.g., pushing muscles above their limits results in injury or bone fracture (frequent in gym and sports). After a moment of elation, my mind became anxious for my survival.

Sixth Perspective — The Bubble

PC: Olena Shmahalo from Quanta Magazine

I was lucky to be in a safe environment with friends and had easy access to food, and water. Hence, I was able to pacify myself. However, my innate curiosity pushed me further. My body had lost its specificity, but my mind still had a sense of self.

In this depth, I reached the boundary of ego. Think of it like a filter that only lets signals, thoughts, and feelings that conform to my identity, to pass through. Due to it, I am an individual and a unique person. It’s like thinking of yourself as the center of your own story. The external World would deem me an average person, but this perspective allowed me to feel special in my own story. As a religious individual, I used to think that the world is God’s conspiracy to teach my soul the skills, that will eventually lead to Moksha in some future reincarnation. This made me feel special all the time. Trying to move beyond this bubble’s film scared me. I didn’t know what was outside this bubble. The anxiousness returned with reinforcements. This time it was not just my body but my mind as well. I could go crazy if I go beyond this level. Suddenly, a recurring thought gripped my senses:

This will result in a bad trip. This will result in a bad trip…

Despite all these threats, I couldn’t stop myself from dissolving.

Seventh Perspective — The Sage

PC: Olena Shmahalo from Quanta Magazine

This was the second time I was on Acid. Earlier, it was on the mountains of Himalayas, with a view that extended the boundaries of my imagination. In that trip, I had imposed some restrictions on my mind. One of them was not letting my ego dissolve completely. This time I had removed hinges from this restriction.

I was losing control of my mind. The more I tried to hold onto it, the more it disappeared between my fingers. Suddenly, I saw the perspectives as people with vicious smiles. I had done something wrong, I was drowning in my own head. My friends were just a whisper away but I couldn’t say anything. Even opening my eyes was impossible. After reaching the depths of darkness, I let go. Open to any outcome, even death.

And then there was light.

A blind man opened his new eyes. Seventh saw the whole Universe as an infinite sea, where I was just a bubble. There were numerous bubbles around me, perhaps from other people. They were not real but were personas, reflecting the memories of characters I know in reality or fiction. There was a sea of signals, feelings, and thoughts all around me. However, I was just an observer and not a participant. The water couldn’t drench me. There was no bias corresponding to my personality. I was one with the Universe like a stone, a mountain, or a river. The only difference was, I could move through this sea, and vividly experience the interactions of the other personas with it, just like my own. I could shift my individuality from one bubble to another and accept their interpretations, and thoughts. However, my own bubble or persona was a better fit than any other.

There was a constant pour of water into the sea, coming from the five rivers corresponding to my senses. I could observe my bubble acting like a filter and only letting specific signals to cross its boundary. On further exploration, I found my whole world as part of the sea.

The confusion between reality and imagination should have made me insane. But there was some kind of understanding or expansion in my mind. I could clearly see the boundary between this world and the external world of reality. The rivers of my senses were coming from the external real world and were merging into this world of imagination.

Eighth Perspective — Senpai

As an average human, one can only hold 7 +-2 chunks of information at the same time (Miller’s Law). I was already pushing these limits. But now, I didn’t want to stop. My thoughts were “What’s the worst that could happen?” I started pushing my mind but nothing new was coming up. “Could 7 be the limit of these depths?”, I thought to myself. After a patient wait in a place where time stood still, I noticed that music was in the air. It influenced my decision, as I remembered an anecdote: how my friend split the rhythm into parts (1/3rd, 1/4th, 1/8th, etc.), all inside his head. As I went deeper, I was only able to hold one perspective at a time. They were consuming my consciousness. It had to be split into eight parts, corresponding to each perspective.

To give an analogy, think of opening the Chakras. There are seven of them corresponding to seven aspects of life: Survival, Pleasure, Will Power, Love, Voice, Insight, and Universe. Opening each of them purifies your spirit and opens up the flow of energy. At a time, it’s hard to open even two of them simultaneously. As we start opening these Chakras they overwhelm our mind. Now, the analogy is to open all the Chakras at the same time. Seven parts of your brain will be observing each individual Chakra separately, and then there will be the eighth part observing the other seven.

There was a slight divergence from this analogy. The perspectives are not just observations but conscious entities. It’s like having eight separate personalities in your head, each at a different depth of meditation. At this point using depth to explain the sequence loses its meaning. All seven of them, and the eighth observing them all were individual personalities. They all took up equal standing.

My Senpai

Ninth Perspective — Sensei

PC: Cameron Gray, source

My brain had already heated up like a furnace. I knew that I won’t be able to reach any further. Hence, I worked on all theoretical possibilities and settled for one. What if all the eight personalities sat together for meditating, perfecting and purifying their minds. I perceived them as real human beings sitting around in a circle, with the eighth at the center. All of them were reaching their limits, with heat signatures from their heads visible like a halo. Eight parts contributed to a common effect. This is analogous to resonance: eight parts vibrating at the natural frequency of the brain. It was a complex combination that resulted in the formation of the Ninth. The whole brain was active at the same time, on the verge of burning neurons. A perfect being.

My Sensei

Tenth Perspective — God’s Essence, रूह, or روح

The tenth is God’s Essence. The brain shuts down completely. You won’t be a living being. You would be as good as air, wind, fire, or even a rock. This infinite simal is the one you try to attain via meditation: closing your mind to thoughts and just being an existence. This perspective completes the whole circle. You can call it Ouroboros or circular logic or even infinity. This is mere existence: a piece of matter that’s just there.