Journeys into the bright world

Increasingly our kindly counselor Ketamine was taking on the guise of the guru in the bottle. Each encounter had a different lesson to convey and her curriculum seemed limitless. Often instruction was imparted by means of analogies, parables or humorous vignettes featuring our various subpersonalities as dramatis personae. She was fond of puns and her language was so alliterative it would wear out an editor's red pencil. A more considerate teacher could hardly be imagined, yet there was an enormous urgency behind her velvet touch. It often seemed as though she were a boundlessly loving mother saying to fractious humanity, "I have so much to give. Please, my children, accept this love medicine so that you may grow up to care properly for one another."

Thus far there had been no bad trips, nor did this contingency seem possible as we were treated to a continuing series of peeks into the production line of a smoothly automated universe. Regular use had convinced us that the substance is about as addictive as meditation. One might crave it the way one might crave to take a walk in the woods, visit a beloved friend or watch a superbly produced movie show. Physically however, it made no demands as long as it was used in moderation.

In many respects the low-dose sessions were more satisfying than the high-dose sessions. Twenty-five milligrams would open the door to an easily remembered esthetic archetypal realm of of purely sensuous enjoyment, whereas fifty would still wring out tears of frustration at my continuing inability to make the connections between the "here" and the "there." Regardless of the dose level the flights became progressively more pleasurable as I learned how to take off and land like an experienced pilot. Coming back was now a familiar process of de-amplification as I glided in stage by stage without that momentary jolt of fear of never being able to function again. Each time the reminder was given that only a minuscule portion of the nectar I had gathered could be solidified into the honeycombs of communicable information, but this necessary limitation was now acceptable. I was learning to be more appreciative of terra firma simply because of having seen it from above. From an airplane even the ugliest cities can look beautiful, and this was how I now felt about the whole earth.

As the seeds of ideas drawn from the bright world slowly took root in the plowed-up soil of my psyche their consolidation seemed comparable to the grounding of electricity in the earth. Between the original tapping of the lightning and the illumination of the planet through a neural network of galvanic impulses more than two centuries elapsed. Apparently, the analogous rewiring of my own nervous system would have to be correspondingly slow. In my imagination the powerlines that girdle the globe resembled a vitalizing vegetative system. Telephone poles became the trunks of a forested complex of interlinked circuits raying outward from their central generating plants. Transmission towers linked by taproots of subterrnean cables propagated their currents through hedgerows of houses and out through a luxuriant foliage of extension-corded appliances. Telephones, TV sets, lamps and electrified apparatus of every conceivable variety ramified like the vines, creepers, tendrils, stems and branches of the burgeoning underbrush of civilization

The electronic jungles of earth are now being dynamized into one glowing planetary organism. Could, or should, the same bioelectric effect be produced within the human body? If so, what flowers of light might eventually appear? If such an evolutionary innervation were possible, then I would offer myself as a space cadet. What better experimental subject could be found? I had written my books, paid my karmic debts and had no dependents. Even if this artificial lightning ran amuck humanity would be the wiser. After all, someone had to eat the first oyster, undergo the first appendectomy and land on the moon, despite the hazards involved. To join the elite vanguard would not only be a challenge, it would be a privilege and an honor.