Ego shattered from ketamine. Has anyone else experienced this?

[anoceanofjoy]

What does it feel like to die?
A near death experience induced by Ketamine

"A place to live unharmed by death
Does not exist
Not in space, not in the sea
Nor if you stay in the midst of mountains."
--Buddha


Buddha says that a healthy contemplation of death throughout your lifetime helps to counteract the misguided notion that life is permanent. Yet ironically we who live in the West are rarely privy to the one phenomenon that we will certainly come to us all. Nothing in life is certain, except that on day life as we know it will be no longer. Death is hidden away, swept under the carpet, kept behind closed doors. And the reasons for this are as numerous as they are varied, death is private, it is sad, it forces us to confront our mortality, to take a long hard look at our life and to decide whether or not we are satisfied that we have put our time on earth to good use. Did I make a difference? Has my life amounted to something? Did I learn whatever it is I was put on earth to learn? These are all questions that resonate amongst all of us as members of the human race, regardless of our culture, our nationality or our religion. But if death is hidden away from us, and if the culture we are brought up in eschews the idea of contemplating death; considers it to be morbid and unnatural. Then how are we ever to understand what death is? What does it feel like to die?

Two years ago I experienced death, and the experience was so enormous, so profound, that the memory I have of it has been seared into my inner most being and will remain with me until the day I experience it again in earnest. For me death was the most incredible, breathtaking, terrifying, eye-opening and deeply, deeply spiritual experience I have ever had. It quite literally brought me to my knees, it unleashed an inhuman scream, a scream that rippled across the universe. It was the scream of a being experiencing his true nature for the first time. My near death experience occurred two years ago, and although I have only just now plucked up the motivation to write about it, not one day has gone by when I haven't thought of it and revisited the place I was transported to. The realm of the eternal. Thedivine source.

I was 27 when I decided to take ketamine for the third or fourth time.  I had experimented with several recreational drugs over the past decade, but had never really experienced the dissociative effects high doses of ketamine can induce.  And although I had used lower doses of ketamine before, this experience was only the second time that I had entered a k-hole – that endlessly looping and almost robotic "cartoon-i-verse" which seems to lie just behind the curtain of reality. And even now, some two years later, trying to put this utterly ineffable experience into words stretches the English language to its limits.   The experience took me to soaring highs, producing feelings of bliss and ecstatic love for the world and the people in it, but simultaneously it also took me to a place of unadulterated horror, where the darkness and the sheer dread and hopelessness forced me to see that the state we refer to as "hell" does exist...and for a moment I was given a glimpse into all that is evil and wrong with mankind – like a horrid divine experiment that had gone terribly wrong and had begun rotting and eating away at itself.  The culmination of this ketamine experience resulted in me being carried out of a nightclub kicking and screaming, convinced that I had just experienced my own death.  A death as breathtakingly beautiful and perfect as it was terrifying and life changing.  I am not sure what part of me died that night, but one thing is clear, when I woke up the next morning back in the reality I had always known, I was an immensely different and a fundamentally more spiritual and altruistic person

Entering into what I can only refer to as the 'world of k' was to me like entering into another dimension or reality which exists behind the scenes of the reality in which we all play out our lives. It's like seeing the great wheels and cogs that comprise the machinery of the universe endlessly revolving in upon themselves - as they have done for aeons.  One has the strange sense that time and space do not exist, and as such, one begins to truly begin to understand the concept of 'eternity', a strange and unsettling feeling which courses through your inner most self... like the slow recollection of an old truth you have always known, and at the same time, always managed to forget, time and time again.  In this particular case the fall into the k hole was both sharp and almost immediate.  A sense of foreboding overcame me, as if I had taken a bite of the forbidden apple and consequently forever condemned myself to the dark, robotic and surreal k-dimension.  I recall thinking, "Why did you take the k, now you have enslaved yourself into the k-dimension, you have infected yourself with the drug, and now whilst you may continue to live your everyday existence and reality, you will forever be bound to this darker side of reality and subject to being thrown back into the world of k at any given moment.  The world of k is horrifically real as an experience – in some ways even more real than reality, it's as if ketamine acts as some sort of chemical key which allows your cerebral cortex to unlock the part of your brain capable of accessing this dimension.  Like a radio tuner all of sudden rewired to pick up not just other radio stations on air, but also capable of seeing the antenna, the sound waves and all the equipment which facilitates the broadcast.


The most frightening and simultaneously enlightening aspect of a high ketamine dose as its ability to produce a schizophrenic break and completely obliterate the ego.

"To produce a schizophrenic break you need to collapse the ego, preferably as rapidly as possible. There are different ways of defining the ego but I define it thusly: The ego is a structure of the personality that is made up of what we believe to be true about ourselves, others, the world around us, and our place in it. We form these beliefs as based on our relationships, our experiences, the roles we play and the activities we engage in. All of these combined, create our ego -- which is, for most of us, our sense of who we are."...   "The overall experience is described as falling into a kind of abyss of isolation. This comes about because there is such a discrepancy between the subjective inner world that one has been swept into, and the mundane everyday world outside.... It is like falling into a death - not only a death state, but also a death space - the "afterlife," the "realm of the ancestors," the "land of the dead," the "spirit world." The common experience here is for the person to look about and think that half the people around him are dead too. While in this condition, it's very hard for one to tell if one is really alive or not."

For me it was as though I had somehow managed to tear through the fabric of reality and to step behind the scenes of the world. Everything moved in slow motion in an endless cycle. The universe is cyclical, perfect and eternal - it had no beginning and it will never have an end, after all, how could it?...when time and space are mere concepts that we perceive through our unavoidably human experience.  Life is nothing more than our divine creator playing out a grand eternal game through us, the characters he has created.  Life is God's way of perceiving himself.  

"Right away at the beginning, the death experience is accompanied by the feeling that you've gone back to the beginning of time. This involves a regression, a return to the state of infancy in one's personal life history. But hand in hand with this is the feeling of slipping back into the world of the primordial parents, into a Garden of Eden. For example, it's a very common experience to feel one is the child of Adam and Eve, say, at the beginning of time. This is very symbolic, obviously. It's pretty much a representation of the psyche at the start of one's individual career after birth."

I remember distinctly having memories of Adam and Eve and the other narratives I'd read about in the bible. Words and phrases would rise in my mind, as though the entire experience was being narrated to me by some divine voice. Or perhaps it was just my own voice. The voice of the eternal "I" that had always been there underneath "self" but who had been drowned out by the incessant chatter of the mind. The phrase "That's life" passed through my mind again and again as though I was realising for the first time what "life" actually was. I remember seeing language as an entity unto itself, seeing the spirit of language... it is alive and it sustains this life as we transmit it from generation to generation. I remember seeing all the meaning bundled up in a word like "love" and feeling it with the same intensity as if for that split second the voices of every single human being who had ever uttered it were coursing through my mind. I remember the phrase "The Game of Life" passing through my stream of consciousness and laughing as I saw for the first time the mechanics of this game unfolding before my eyes. I remember repeating a word over and over in my head. It was not an English word and to this day I don't know how to write it or what language it is. Phonetically it sounded like "Thuck ah dun dunstall." I do however know what the word means. The word being spoken to me from the inner most depths of my soul was my name, not the name I have been given in this lifetime, but my eternal name, the name I have remembered at the point of all my previous deaths, and the name I will continue to remember for as many lives as I am forced to wander through Samsaric existence. I saw all the people in my life as though they were characters in 'my story', some of them good, some of them malevolent...but all of them were there for a purpose, to teach me something about myself, to allow me to grow as a spirit. It was as though we were all intertwined in a great eternal narrative and that each of us in our various lives plays a role in order for others to grow.

Suddenly it was as though everybody in the room turned to face me and I felt all of the cells in my body tremble. The thought passed through my consciousness, "I am about to die... I know what's going to happen now...this moment is about to be the moment of my death." I felt all the people in the room turn in slow motion to look at me, as though something profound was about to happen. Again there was a primordial word for it that I heard from someone in the room. "He's about to go through his......(then the primordial word for death)."

Suddenly it was as though all the cells in my body turned to water and I quite literally felt myself collapse into the ground, back into the very universe from which I first sprung. I let out a cry, an inhuman scream from the very depths of my soul. It is a sound I never realised I could make, a sound that my friends told me later literally stopped every person in the club in their tracks and caused them to look over to where I had collapsed. As I collapsed into the ground I was screaming at the top of my lungs the word for my name, as though this unearthly scream of my primordial name could somehow force me to remember who I was and where I had come from.  As I collapsed to the ground next to my friend I was convinced that I was experiencing my own death unfold, I felt a sort of a guiding presence trying to tell me that what I was now going through was a natural progression in the higher scheme of things, that it was a process that everyone had a time and a moment reserved for them to die, and that everything that was about to unfold was a perfectly normal step in the process.  At the time I felt like every person in the room surrounding me had already passed though into the next realm and that they were there to witness and guide me as I passed through to join them.  I collapsed kicking and screaming to the ground, I felt a guiding force instructing me to do so, to release all the anger and the pain of life out of my body, to cleanse myself.  I honestly believed that each and everyone one of them, at their chosen point in time, had also undergone this experience.  Finally I saw the faces of two of my friends as they picked me up and it was as though somehow all the cells in my body reformed and I came out the other side. It was as though for one brief instant instead of cycling in upon itself, the universe passed one cycle through my body. As I got up I could see my two close friends comforting me "See, you're going to be ok, it's ok. You're going to be ok because death is not the end, it is just the end of one cycle and the beginning of another"


"All kinds of imagery comes tumbling across the field of awareness. It's like the mythological image in a perfect stained-glass window being smashed, and all the bits and pieces being scattered. The effect is very colourful, but it's very hard to discern how the pieces belong to each other. Any attempt to make sense of it is an exercise in abstraction from the actual experience. The important thing is to find the process running through it all."

I also distinctly remember a feeling of fear and terror which came from feeling like I'd popped out of reality and into this great eternal loop.  My friend and I would be thrown together, intertwined, both with gaunt eyes filled with horror, begging each other to try and remember, to "never forget"...but each time we would pass through another cycle, sure enough, we seemed to be back to the place where we had begun, forever trapped in this world we had dared venture into.  I remember the songs lyrics playing in the club "Funky disco" playing in a long, monotone drawn out fashion in my head, on some sort of loop.  This loop experience is also characteristic of the k-world itself, indeed one of the overwhelming thoughts that continued to pervade my k experience with my friend was that I had in fact enslaved myself into the k-world, which is a world effectively on a loop...complete with its dark inhabitants – the darker side of humanity, the twisted and contorted faces, bodies that appeared to be made from stone of the individuals serve as a constant reminder that these are the individuals who had chosen to try k, and had thus effectively ensnared themselves in the k-loop – a world from which they would never find any escape, and would be damned to inhabit for the rest of eternity, with no possibility of death, no peace, no nothingness.


Walking out of the club onto the road where I had spent so many nights with my friends over the years was like walking out into bliss.  I saw the faces of all the people I had ever loved, and as the process wore on I felt the veil which obscures all the mysteries of life falling down all around me.  I felt that I finally understood.  In particular I felt a deep connection with language and the way we use language to construct meaning around us.  I remember contemplating certain words and turns of phrases in English, and finally understanding a deeper meaning, how they fit into the jigsaw puzzle that is life, and how they are but the building blocks of all those who have gone before us – the very spirits I was about to encounter as I moved into the next realm.  I saw all the people I had ever thought I had loved - some brief encounters, other more lasting as finally my image settled on a friend of mine – my one true soul mate.  I saw him in a light that I had never seen him in before, I felt the love and the connection building in me like a volcano, I lay down on the road in front of me and let it all out in a tide of tears and screaming.  I was screaming I love you, god I f**cking love you.  I finally felt bound to someone, the right one, and I now felt that we would be moving together as one in the next realm as one unit.  As two beautiful souls bound eternally together.  I realised then the meaning of life, as I saw our two souls parting together, and my human conscious re-preparing itself to enter the earthly realm as a new spirit.  I was convinced that one part of me was about to be born again as a new child, although in this particular experience it never occurred, or if it did occur I was not aware of it whilst it was happening.  As I neared the end of my death I felt euphoria, I was screaming 'That's life', that's what life is!  I was blown away by the sheer magnitude of life force – that which we call god – but what I experienced as an omnipresent energy from which all life is derived.  I felt complete, I felt whole, I felt peace.  But no light can exist without darkness and shortly after this euphoric epiphany I began to feel the darkness again - the terror and the evil that is also life.  As I held onto my friend he began to disintegrate in my arms.  I bit him savagely on the chest to try and hold onto him, drawing blood and causing him to cry out – I had wanted to try and keep part of him with me, to stop the erosion.  But he began to melt away, as did the feeling of bliss and euphoria.  The guiding presence told me that I needed to experience all that is life, not merely the good, but also the bad.  I heard my friend saying "Don't forget how good this was and I'll see you next time our spirits rejoin'.  But I also simultaneously felt the guiding presence telling me that soon all would be forgotton, that my conscience would be reset, and that still deep down below this world of bliss, of heaven and of euphoria, was the world of K, the mechanical, robotic 'loop' world which underpins reality.  That I was forever bound to it, and knowing that fact every time I came to dying in my future lives was ultimately a hell that I was bound to endure.  Life is suffering, and as long as humanlust shackles us to the physical planes, we shall be bound to endure it.  

My death was truly the most breathtakingly beautiful yet simultaneously utterly terrifying experience I have ever gone through.  As I was laying out on the road I felt as though I saw the people who had played a significant role in my life as though for the first time - like they were shedding their masks and I was seeing them in a way that I had been unable to do during my life.  I understood the roles they had played in shaping me, in allowing me to grow and learn as a spirit and I felt an overwhelming love for all of them which overwhelmed and consumed every essence of my being.  Perhaps the best way I can describe it is that I saw their spirits...their essence... I felt their light and their warmth, and was overwhelmed by the collective wisdom and knowledge that I saw within them.  I felt as though I was amongst very old and very wise spirits who were guiding me and helping me grow and move into a new, higher realm.  I felt privileged to have had them in my life.  This included both those who had caused me harm, and those who had brought me love and happiness.  I understood for the first time that they were all, in essence, incredible spirits that in my death brought me a feeling of peace and belonging that I had never known in my mortal life.  I felt a connection to the universe and to these spirits, my friends, that made me realise for the first time that death is not at all something to be feared, and that most importantly that my connection to these great spirits would be eternal.  As the earthly faces of my friends were one by one unveiled, and as I saw each of them as if for the first time, I witnessed the essence of who they truly were and I finally understood what it is to love someone, and just how beautiful and special each of them truly is. I remember finally understanding that we are all at various stages in lives, lives that begin and lives that end.  As I lay there experiencing my death on the road I felt at peace, that death was not something to be feared but to be embraced, and that when my time eventually did come, this understanding that I had been given a glimpse of in my k-hole would reveal itself in its entirety.   That the energy which powers us as humans is eternal, and that whilst I was one thing in this life, I was male, I was someone who chose to use drugs, I was someone who was not religious, etc... that in my next lifetime I would be someone else.  That life itself was eternal, even if my life was not.  That on my 'next time around' so to speak, that I would experience things from a different point of view, perhaps as another person, perhaps simply as another animal or being somewhere.  I remember laughing at those who had told me that the way I had lived my life was wrong knowing that after the death of their physical selves that the energy that is them could return as somebody like me.  That their values were only contingent on their physical surrounds and of their geographic place in the world.  I felt a new sense that our concepts of right and wrong were quite arbitrary, that life itself was so infinitely grand and all consuming that those mistakes or wrongs that we committed on the earthly plane were in the grand scheme of things were of little relevance.  That all the goodness that exists in humanity can only be so with the necessary existence of all that is bad with humanity.  That both goodness and badness are life, and that life itself is so infinitely grand and amazing that we as humans could never be capable of comprehending it through our physical, earthly selves.    


Thoughts, similar experiences on ketamine or other Entheogens?  Write to me
anoceanofjoy@gmail.com
or check out my blog
http://oceanofjoy.blogspot.com/

[NoY]

That was a fantastic read thankyou for sharing 

:NoY:

[personalreality]

NoY where have you been!?

[NoY]

lol Around 

[Stookie]

It was an interesting spiritual experience to read about. I've had life-changing stuff like that, but sans drugs.

One thing I've never seen mentioned here is that Ketamine is a controlled substance used by veterinarians as a large-animal tranquilizer. Yes, it will put down a horse. Just wanted to throw that out there.

[personalreality]

Me, NoY and Xanth talked about this in IRC today.

Ketamine is used in veterinary applications, but it is also used as a pediatric anesthetic.  Yep, they give it to little people.

The biggest reason its still used is because it doesn't suppress the breathing rate as much as other anesthetics.

It's abused because it causes a severe case of dissociation from the body where people feel like they're sunk deep inside themselves, thus the term "K hole".

[T.L.]

I wouldn't advocate something like Ketamine. Or drugs in general. But I do advocate things like DMT, and only because it is naturally produced by our bodies. I think (can't remember now) that Ketamine is in the same class of drugs as PCP (angel dust). Another reason I support DMT is because it part of what already enables us to project, and is likely the reason we have some of the OBE precursors that a lot of us have (vibrations, sounds..etc). Ketamine is interesting to read about though, I wouldn't want to put it inside of my body though that is for sure.

[anoceanofjoy]

I should just point out that in posting this account of my NDE, I am in no way condoning the use of Ketamine, which in many countries is a controlled substance due to the dissociative anaesthesia it produces.  But when you're young, you do stupid things... and believe me when I say that when I took this substance I had absolutely zero appreciation for what it was actually capable of doing to my mind and to my soul.  In short I do not consider ketamine to be a recreational drug at all, but a very potent entheogen which is able to produce intense spiritual awakenings.  It is worth noting that before this experience I was a staunch atheist who was completely devoid of any spiritual component whatsoever.  This probably adds to the reason why the experience has had such a profound effect on me – because I realised that my views on 'what I was' were completely mistaken. 

For a couple of years I have been researching ketamine and its spiritual usage - which many people find difficult to accept given that it is a chemical artificially synthesized by man.  But the reality is that ketamine does possess incredibly spiritual properties, and there are a great deal of documented accounts of people who experienced something similar to me which stand testament to this.  Again often these experiences occur accidentally whilst the drugs are being used for recreational purposes.

I was so moved by my spiritual transformation that I attempted to get in contact with a medical professional who had experience using ketamine for purposes other than as an anaesthetic.  As it turns out there was a very controversial project in Russia in the 90s which experimented treating drug addicts and alcoholics with high doses of the drug.  What the doctors were astounded to find was that the drug was almost consistently producing mystical and spiritual experiences amongst the test group.  In addition to that – it was a very effective treatment for addiction is it enabled the person to take a very powerful and spiritual internal journey to see what the substance addiction was doing to their soul.  Here's what the Russian neurochemistry, Olga Louchakova wrote to me last week when I sent her an account of my experience.

"In 90s, I worked closely both clinically, and in research with ketamine. My meditation groups were used as a control group for the Russian ketamin study conducted by Krupitski. I am a medical doctor, and a neurochemist in the past.  The ego-shattering effects of ketamin are well known among practitioners. Also, I can personally relate to the experience of energetic opening that you describe, and it is very interesting because the literature on ketamin, to my knowledge, does not have the descriptions of energetic shifts.   It is also interesting because, from the stand point of neuroanatomy, third eye is located on the same level in the head where major chemical effects take place, i.e. on he cusp of cortex and subcortical structures. The visions, if you had any, the audioeffects etc. are very individualized, and depend on the preconditioned assumptions, personal history etc. Ketamin of course is related to the chemistry of religious cognition, as little as we know about the latter."

And here is her background should anyone be interested
http://www.itp.edu/academics/faculty/louchakova.php

On a final note, I find it slightly hypocritical T.L that you would advocate the use of DMT – regardless of whether or not it is naturally produced.  I have friends who have used that drug and have said that the projection it produces is beyond words.  This is one seriously powerful drug and should be used with the greatest of caution.  These days I am more inclined to try and pursue a spiritual path through natural methods such as meditation and yoga.  That said many of these visionary plants and chemicals have been used throughout history by various societies, particularly amongst shamans.  the Mayans, the Australian aboriginals, the Egyptian pharaohs, and all of the mystical branches of  almost all the major religions, i.e. Sufism (Islam), Kabbalah (Judaism), Vendanta (Hinduism), Jhana to some degree in Buddhism, and even Christian Mysticism.  Many of these societies believed that the plants contained spiritual properties put there by our divine source in order to teach humans and to help them to understand their true nature.  And of course it is entirely plausible that our ancestors possessed a far greater knowledge and understanding of true human nature and the universe than we do now

I think that it's quite sad that the taboo against visionary plants, which has largely been created by their recreational misuse, has hindered a thorough scientific inquiry into an area of the human mind that we still know very little about.

[CFTraveler]

These days I am more inclined to try and pursue a spiritual path through natural methods such as meditation and yoga.

So why introduce the subject in the first place?

[anoceanofjoy]

The reason is in the title of the post.  I am interested to talk to people who have been through something similar. That and I think that what happened to me might interest some people.

[T.L.]

I do not consider ketamine to be a recreational drug at all, but a very potent entheogen which is able to produce intense spiritual awakenings.  It is worth noting that before this experience I was a staunch atheist who was completely devoid of any spiritual component whatsoever.  This probably adds to the reason why the experience has had such a profound effect on me – because I realised that my views on 'what I was' were completely mistaken.

I wasn't saying you condone it, don't worry. From what you say at least at that time it was a good thing for you. Before my first out of body experiences I wasn't religious, but common sense and logic told me there was something else. That something else though I didn't think was something created by a personified god, some invisible guy who controls the universe and all planes of existence. I basically looked at it the same way I look at space. There is more out there than we could ever know, and the same thing goes with non physical places. I never in a million years thought that I could visit these places while alive though, and I didn't care to really speculate on what else there could be in the non-physical. My first out of body experience was a complete accident I had when trying to do meditation. That day afterward I was googling key words that defined what lead up to it and the experience itself... 'vibrating feeling' 'mind traveling'...etc because I seriously had no clue what the hell happened. I was sitting up in my couch 'relaxing and quieting the mind' and then something just snapped had this vibrating pulsating thing going on with loud rushing sounds, and next thing I know I was standing up in someone's log cabin looking house wondering just what in the hell happened and where I was.

Once I finally found the key words Out of body experience I ran into a ton of forums, and ran into books such as Robert Monroe's books, Astral Dynamics and a lot of other great books. Really all projection did for me was validate what I already concluded, except now I can go and see things for myself. I keep ending up in these amazing places, like the one I ended up in today. It was absolutely amazing. Anyway I did enjoy the read so don't think I didn't.

[anoceanofjoy]

Interesting TL.  I know what you mean, I was googling straight away as well trying to figure out what happened to me.  When I discovered forums like Erowid it was only then that I begin to scratch the surface of what was possible.  And then of course a couple of weeks ago I discovered this forum and have been on it everyday since.  There are some great stories on here.

Really all projection did for me was validate what I already concluded, except now I can go and see things for myself. I keep ending up in these amazing places, like the one I ended up in today.

Are you able to produce OBE's pretty much as and when you want?  That would be fantastic?

I haven't had an natural OBE yet, although today I lay on my bed for an hour listening to a new Hindu mantra my friend sent me from India backed by a friend of hers from Australia - an indigenous Australian - playing the didgeridoo.  I'm Australian so I really connect to the sound of this instrument, and I love the myths and legends of the dreamtime that the aboriginals have.  Anyway...I found that I was really able to go into quite a deep meditative state.  It felt as though I was on the cusp of being able to OBE, but that at the moment I'm trying a little to hard - like I really want it a bit too much.  I guess I'll just keep practicing and learning to go with the moment.  Having seen the astral plane already in such a long and vivid experience I do know that it is REAL, and I believe I can get there.  So at least there is no doubt hindering my progress.

By the way TL, I just stumbled on what you look like in the member photos, always great to be able to put a face to the text. 
PS nice shades

[personalreality]

what's with the sudden surge of Ketamine posts?

I think I counted 3.

That's strange.

[anoceanofjoy]

That's my fault, I replied to a few old ones, in addition to my new one.  Stuck in a khole

[personalreality]

ah.

have you seen the movie "Cecil B. Demented"?

there's a character in it who is constantly doing drugs and he does a very comical exaggeration of getting stuck in a k hole.

[anoceanofjoy]

No I haven't.  Will definitely check it out PR, sounds funny.

[personalreality]

It's a John Waters movie with Melanie Griffith and Stephen Dorf

[anoceanofjoy]

Ah isn't he the guy who did Pink Flamenco?

[Everlasting]

Hmm drugs can really bonk you up, permanently sometimes. It's quite absurd to lie on the floor  screaming your lungs out.

[personalreality]

Pink Flamingos

Yes.

[grzazek]

That was an excellent read. I've had similar experiences from mushrooms. Reality completely melted away, and the 3 of us seemed to be reduced to nothing but matter reduced to a vibration, it was easy to appreciate the connectedness of everything. Thought became primary energy, and the human body just a carcass which we can possess.