The Experiment At La Chorrera

Chapter 11, The Experiment at La Chorera

The night was absolutely black. A low-lying cloud bank had appeared, muffling the small world of

La Chorera and wrapping it in a bowl of all-absorbing velvet darkness. Following the

storm, we had rebuilt our fire and had driven off several liters of water from our infusion

of Banisteriopsis capi, so it was much strengthened over what it had been before. We then added crushed

leaves that Dennis had gathered that day near the Chorro and which we were using as DMT admixture

plants. We did this because we had tentatively identified these plants as Justicia pectoralis

variety Stenophylla, a plant commonly used as an admixture of Yahweh in the Valpace drainage.

Now, years after that evening, I questioned both the concentration at which we brewed the

Banisteriopsis and our identification of the admixture plant. There is no doubt that there

was considerable harming alkaloid in the infusion, but not so much as I later learned was necessary to

provoke an unambiguous intoxication. The harming alkaloids present were, in my opinion, boosted

by the psilocybin accumulated in our systems, or rather the MAO-inhibiting effect of the beta-carbolines,

caused the residual psilocybin to emerge into consciousness as a deep hallucinogenic experience.

While I completed the boiling, Ev and Dennis went to their hammocks and lay down to await the completion of

the preparations. We laughed together and talked softly, yet in spite of this there was an undercurrent

of tension as we approached the experiment into which so much of our energy had been poured. It was

very critical. They were becoming very clumsy and seemed to find their bodies hard to handle. It was

that which had sent them to their hammocks. I said that I would do whatever needed attention. Our little hut

on its stilts looked in the flickering firelight like a small spaceship dropped into the howling jungles

of an alien world. We all felt like we were approaching hyperspatial overdrive. There was a sense of immense

energies accumulating. The effect was reinforced by the hammocks hanging like acceleration slings,

ready to receive a starship's crew. Dennis lay in his hammock, nearly unable to hold a pencil, but

writing furiously in tight operational terms about the experiment just ahead. The mushroom is

presently metabolizing within our bodies. This has keyed in on the tryptamine template in the living

mushroom and it has been sensitized for the condensation of the harmine psilocybin DNA molecule. When the

yahe is ingested, the harmine analog will start to metabolize within the body. The ESR of the

pre-sensitized psilocybin circuit will immediately cancel the ESR of the harmine and cause it to bond

superconductively to the DNA-RNA complex both in our bodies and in the mushrooms simultaneously

in a higher dimension. The bonding completed, the harmine DNA memory bank and drive unit,

will condense into the waiting charge psilocybin circuit in the mushroom. We will see this condensation

as it will appear in the mushroom at the same instant that the bond is completed in a higher dimension.

Dennis explained that he was unable to move very well because something having to do with the backward

flow of time and the ever-increasing constraints on the set of possible futures had rendered him nearly

immobile. Only the mind, planning and computing, was free. I finished boiling the yahe. I ground the

admixture plants and added them to the cooling brew. I moved the yahe into the hut, then the mushroom,

those things in place we were ready to begin. Prior to this point we had taken no hallucinogens for

several days. The effects we were experiencing were not arising from that source. Something else was

happening. Dennis was now narrating our countdown toward an omega point that none of us could really

understand. We were completely transformed with the expectation that possibly we would witness the

outbreak of the millennium. He said that time was appearing to slow down as we approached this point.

As proof, or rather witness to this amazing assertion, he called our attention to the candle that I had set

upon a small shelf jutting from the wall of the hut. Unattended, its slight tilt had become slowly

exaggerated, so that now it hung at a crazy angle, defying gravity because, he said, time was passing so

slowly that we could not see that it was actually in the act of falling. I walked closer to this apparition

and bent toward the flame. It appeared still, absolutely frozen. My mind shot back to the moment above the river

when it too had seemed stilled forever. The flame was uncanny. As deeply as I cared to look into it I could

see no movement of particles or gas. We, or I, seemed to have my usual freedom of movement, but the world

around me was coming to a crystalline and eerie halt. It was Dennis who finally spoke. A series of quantized

energy levels have to be broken through in order to bond this thing. It is part mythology, part

psychology, part applied physics. Who knows? We will make three attempts before we break out of the

experimental mode. We all drank the Yahweh, sending it churning through our guts. Dennis took only one

mushroom so that he could hear the tone. Darkness was utter and we had no clocks. It seemed hours since Dave

and Vanessa had left us. All was finally in readiness. The living mushroom, the Harmin brew,

the Harmin smoking mixture. After we each had taken a half a cup of the Yahweh infusion,

we settled down to wait. Dennis had been hearing the ESR tone that he deemed the sine qua non of what we

were attempting for the past several days. After about 15 minutes he announced that he could hear it more

clearly and that it was gaining strength. He felt prepared to attempt the experiment at any time,

he said. We agreed that each time during the actual making of the sound we would extinguish the candle

so that we would not have our minds burdened with any tryptamine-induced facial distortions that the

odd yelling might cause. Years before there had been episodes involving DMT and spasms of facial

musculature that were fairly hair-raising for the observer, involving as they did the entities of

Tantric Buddhism, the bulging eyes, the rolling and possibly long tongues, that sort of thing. Dennis rose

up in his hammock then. The candle went out and he sounded his first howl of hypercarbulation. It was

mechanical and loud like a bull-roarer and ended with a convulsive spasm that traveled throughout his body

and landed. We relit the candle only long enough to determine that everyone wanted to continue

and agreed that Dennis' next attempt should be made from a sitting position on the floor of the hut.

This was done. Again, a long, whirring yodel, strange and unexpectedly mechanical each time it was

sounded. I suggested a break before the third attempt, but Dennis was quite agitated and eager to

bring it through, as he put it. We settled in for the third yell and when it came it was like the others,

that lasted much longer and became much louder. It was like an electric siren wailing atomic attack over

the still night jungle. Silence, the silence of the transition from one world to another, the silence of

the Gidniago gap, and then the sound of the crowing of a cock, the cock at the mission. Three times his call

came, clear but from afar, seeming to confirm us as actors on a stage, part of a dramatic contrivance.

Dennis had said that if the experiment were successful, the mushroom would be obliterated,

the low temperature phenomena would explode the cellular material, and what would be left would be a

standing wave, a violet ring of light the size of the mushroom cap. That would be the holding mode of

the lens, or whatever it was. Then someone would take command of it, whose DNA it is. They are it.

It is a mind which can be seen and held in one's hand. It is indestructible. It is all space and time,

the universe, but a monad, a monadic plasma, which contains all space and time, including one's own mind.

Dennis leaned toward the mushroom standing on the raised experiment area. Look. As I followed his

gaze, he raised his arm and across the fully expanded cap of the mushroom fell the shadow of his ruana.

Clearly, but only for a moment, as the shadow bisected the glowing carp before, I saw not a mature

mushroom, but a planet, the earth, lustrous and live, blue and tan and dazzling white.

It is our world. His voice was full of unfathomable emotion. I could only nod. I did not understand,

but I saw it clearly, although my vision was only a thing of a moment. We have succeeded.

I don't understand. And I did not. Let's walk to the pasture. I need to think.

Ev was exhausted by the night's activities and probably glad to have us leave her in the

hut with the encroaching dawn promising some sort of new day. As we let ourselves down the log ladder

to the ground, I was struck by the scene of utter confusion that our activities had left behind

during the last frantic hours of brewing the night before. Our huge fire was now only white ashes.

The waste from the ahay-making was piled beside it, looking like a mound of beached seaweed.

Everything seemed strewn about. This we walked through, shaking the stiffness out of our bodies

and stopping at the small stream that crossed the path to splash water in our faces. We had not spoken.

It was Dennis who broke the silence. You are wondering if we succeeded? Yes. What happened?

Your writing heard on this effect, so what's going on? Well, I'm not sure how, but I know we have

succeeded. Let me try to understand this. As we walked on, my own mind was racing with questions, and as we

walked along, Dennis' occasional comments were, it burst over me, answers to questions that I was

thinking but not articulating. I stopped in my tracks. I clearly formed a question in my mind. Dennis,

head bent beside me, began to answer without waiting for me to articulate my thought aloud.

I was dumbfounded. Was this it, then, I asked, that he had somehow acquired telepathic powers? No. There was more to it than that.

According to Dennis, the bonding of the Harmin into his DNA had given him immediate access to an enormous

cybernetically stored fund of information, and this information was freely available to anyone in the world who

looked into their mind and prefaced their question with the word, Dennis.

The absurdity of the second half of this proposition struck me as utterly too much,

but naturally, at his insistence, I made the test. I picked up a small plant growing at my feet and

closed my eyes and asked, Dennis, what is the name of this plant? Immediately and without any effort of my

own that I was aware of, a scientific name, now forgotten, popped into my head. I tried the same

thing again with a different plant, and to my amazement received a different answer. The experiment

seemed to secure that something was giving answers in my head, but I could not tell if they were correct

or not. I was shaken. When we had left the hut on this walk, I was sure that we had failed and that we

had to talk over revising our approach. I even felt relief since the obsessive nature of it all had been

a strain. But now, as we walked along, and I could hear a voice in my head that was answering, however

inanely or inaccurately any question put to it, I was less sure. Dennis was oddly preoccupied, yet he assured

me that his effort had succeeded and that all over the world the wave of hypercarvelation was sweeping

through the human race, eliminating the distinction between the individual and the community as

everyone discovered themselves spontaneously pushing off into a telepathic ocean whose name was

that of its discoverer, Dennis McKenna. As I watched my mind and listened to my brother rave,

I began to realize that the experiment had indeed unleashed some sort of bizarre effect.

Why it was that I was able to make the leap from assuming that we were having a peculiar localized

experience to the idea that we were key parts of a mankind-wide phenomena is an important unanswered

question speaking volumes about my susceptibility to suggestion at that moment. I was quite simply the

victim of a cognitive hallucination, that is, rather than a visual experience of something

not actually present, a hallucination that is a total shift of the highest levels of our cognitive

relationship to the world. The psilocybin-induced cognitive hallucination made the impossible and unlikely

seem probable and reasonable. I was becoming flooded with ecstasy as the realization came over me

that we had passed the omega point and that we were now operating in the first few moments of the

millennium. Both of us could feel the excitement in us rising toward the realization that the world was

now somehow radically different, totally different in a fundamental way. Dennis spoke.

So, this must be it. We have not condensed the stone into visible space, but we have generated it in our heads.

It does not immediately appear as a visible vehicle, but first is a teaching, the teaching we hear in

our heads right now, later. The word will be made flesh. I could only stare at my brother. Who is he,

and how is he able to know and do these things? I could only wonder. Now, mother, and possibly lots of

dead people will be showing up soon. Young, he will doubtless come, and Einstein too, and by God,

I want to hear what they have to say. We were embracing each other and laughing. I felt as though

I was being led like a little child. For no reason, I had ceased to question. Rather, I felt an urge to see

other people and feel their immersion in the new heaven and the new earth. As I set out toward the river,

I seemed to myself to be nearly weightless. I felt reborn. I felt full of energy and bursting with

good health and vitality. Over a period of a few minutes, I had passed from weary, disgruntled

skeptic to ecstatic believer. Looking back on it, I believe that for me this was the critical juncture.

Why did I not question Dennis more closely? Was I somehow self-hypnotized? Did the unfamiliar setting,

the restricted diet, strain, and expectations push me into a place where I was unable to resist

participation of a sort in the world of my brother's bizarre ideation? Why was I unable to maintain my

detached and skeptical viewpoint? In some sense, this willing suspension of disbelief is the crux of the

matter, and I believe of many a close encounter situation. The other plays with us and approaches

us through the imagination, and then a critical juncture is reached. To go beyond this juncture

requires abandonment of will and habit. At that moment, the world turns lazily inside out, and what was

hidden is revealed, a magical modality, a different epigenetic landscape than one has known, a landscape

become real. The UFO is a creature of this previously invisible landscape. It is lord of the skies of the

imagination, able to carry anyone with it who will but play, and then let the play deepen and deepen.

As I walked along that perfect morning, no such soothingly objective thoughts came to me. Instead,

I assumed that my body was metabolizing its way toward the resurrection body that we had expected to be

part of the success of the experiment. I did not know what was happening in the world or far away,

but I did know that since the moment Dennis had pronounced the experiment finished, I had felt an

expanding and ever-increasing wave of energy and understanding unfold through my being. As I

walked along, what seemed to me then a profound realization came over me. It was that we are all

enlightened beings, that only our inability to see and feel ourselves and others as we really are keeps us

from shedding our guilt and seeing ourselves as enlightened. I felt very good. I felt better than I

had ever felt before, but I couldn't believe what seemed to be happening. It was about a 10 or 15 minute

walk to Dave and Vanessa's place. By now it was about 7 a.m. The sun was well up in the sky, and it was a beautiful day.

As I walked across the pasture, I would stop and say, Dennis, and the response was instantaneous.

It was just like thought. It confused me. I kept stopping and doing this, sitting down on the grass.

Is it all right? What is it? I don't know. I can't understand what it means. I walked on toward the river.

As I walked along, I did some experiments. I said, Terrence, Terrence. It was very much like talking to

yourself. Then I said, Dennis, and the thing was instantly there, just ready to do business.

Then I said, McKenna, McKenna, and it was still there. I realized that I couldn't reach it with my

first name, but I could reach it with my last name. I could not understand what was going on.

I was pondering these kinds of things when I arrived at the riverside house of Vanessa and Dave.

They were still in their hammocks asleep, but crowded around the door, even this early in the morning,

were a group of wide-eyed Witoto children. As I pushed my way through them, my gaze fell on each,

and I thought, You are enlightened. And you. And you.

My arrival was the first event of the day for Dave and Vanessa. I told them that we had succeeded,

that success was not a condensed hyper-object, but a teaching. I asked them to dress and come with me.

While they were gathering their hammocks, they told me that during the darkest part of the night,

Dave had awakened, hysterical, in a state not unlike the condition induced in him by the electrical

storm the evening before. They had been very agitated during the night and could only attribute

this to what we had been doing. I was interested in all of this, but seemed to hear it as from a long

distance. I wanted to return to the forest and see what else would unfold. In my mind, I was recalling

something else Dennis had said a few minutes before in the pasture. He had said that the demarcation

between day and night, the dawn line, was now making a 24-hour sweep around the world. A sweep that

began at the dawn moment when the experiment at La Cerrera was finished. Throughout the world,

traffic and factories were coming to a halt. People were standing around and realizing that someone,

somewhere, had broken through, that this was not a day like any other day. Dave and Vanessa followed me

back to the forest, grumbling a good part of the way. When we had gone slightly past the place where

I had parted from Dennis, we came upon something which could not at first be fitted into any set of

expectations. This was Dennis, Ruana, and Shirt, discarded in the middle of the path. Next came a

pair of pants, and then further on two sweat socks. And, though I was to learn this only later, his glasses

and his boots had also been hurled away. Following this trail of cast-off garments led us back to the

hut in the forest. There we found Ev and Dennis, both naked and sitting on the floor of the hut,

discussing and doing the Ask Dennis meditation. With the comment that you cannot receive a proper

initiation unless you are naked, Dennis insisted that we take off our clothes. Vanessa peeled and

Dave and I followed her example. The presence of the mushroom was there, and it seemed to be saying,

take off your clothes. Throw everything away. Everything is breaking. All objects are no good

to you now. Throw everything away. You do not need it anymore. We all looked at each other, glossy pubic

hair and secret genitals now in the sunshine. I rolled a joint then. We sat in a circle and smoked.

We told Dave and Vanessa about the teaching and urged them to try it with varying degrees of success,

since a voice in the head is a very subjective thing. If one has it, there is no doubt. If one does

not have it, it seems a very murky thing. Everything was very amicable, except that Dennis was showing a

tendency to talk right through other people's comments as if they were not present. It was as though he were

on a different time track from the rest of us, since he really seemed unable to realize that someone else was

talking. We thought that it was logical to untie our hammocks from the house and take nothing but our

hammocks and go naked into the jungle, tie the hammocks in a tree, and then get into these hammocks.

We would then explore the mode, because clearly you could do more than ask or answer questions.

The door was standing open. God alone knew what one could do. I asked the thing in my mind what

should be done, and had received instruction that we should visually meditate on our lives, and starting

from the present, trace back through our entire life, encountering and setting things right with every

sentient creature that we had ever wronged. When we reached the end of this process, we would leave

our bodies and be somehow free in the dimension of absolute freedom that seemed so near. Lying in our

hammocks, we set out to meditate our way to hyperspace. I could see myself at La Charrera, then going down the

trail to El Encanto, up the river to Legisamo, and back to Bogota, back to Canada, and at each point I

would meet the people that I had lived my life with, and I would say, we got it. I'm sorry. I hope I didn't

offend you too much back there in 3D. It's all over now. It's all over. I could see people. Immediately I reached

out for all of them. I seemed to be able to reach them. We're in the Amazon, I explained to each, and now

we're going home, or someplace. The vision had an utterly bizarre quality. Tears welled up behind my

closed eyelids. It was very peculiar. The voice of the teacher spoke in my head. You've found it. This is

it. It's all over now. There is no more. Within a few hours, the superstructure of human civilization is

going to collapse, and your species is going to go to Jupiter and then to the stars. A day of high

adventure dawns for man at last. First, the images welling up behind closed eyes seemed to be deepening

and growing more intense, but after an hour, it was clear that they were actually fading. One by one,

we pulled ourselves out of the stupor that the morning heat and being in the hammock had induced.

We were talking and talking, analyzing and analyzing. Dennis seemed most out of it. Dave and Vanessa,

uncertain that anything at all had really happened, was distant, and I was feeling definitely

immersed in the surreal perception that had been mine since the chaotic opening of the day.

Something was wrong. Expectation was outrunning reality. Nothing had happened. It came out that no

one could hear Dennis in their mind, except me. They were all actually wondering what was going on.

We had entered the next phase, which was a period of confusion for all. Dennis was disengaging from

reality. I would talk to him, and he didn't know anyone was speaking to him. He was still breaking into

conversations because he didn't know anyone else was speaking. A visit to the priest's outdoor shower was

suggested and seized upon since we were all filthy and covered with the grime of fire tending.

We gathered up our scattered clothing, and during this effort it came out that Dennis had thrown his

glasses away, along with his boots and everything else. Disheveled and disoriented, we set off,

searching unsuccessfully for the lost pair of glasses as we retraced our path to the mission.

We were a group of people of many minds about the previous several hours, some assuming that this was

a day like any other, others assuming that this was the first day of the age at the end of time.

A group of Witoto gazed at us as we passed and then roared with appreciative laughter.

They know, they know what has been achieved, the voice in my head assured me. They were certainly

beaming and chortling about something. On we walked toward the mission and its shower in the sunshine.

Dennis would not stop talking. The consensus was building that we had a crisis on our hands,

but it wasn't yet out of control. We agreed that Yahweh is very peculiar and thought that the passage of a few

hours would smooth everything out. That was everyone's conclusion except Dennis and my own. It was no longer

really possible to communicate with Dennis. My conclusion was that something had happened, that he had done

something, that some kind of odd principle had been manipulated. But it wasn't as we thought it was,

and so we were cast we knew not where. I was calm. I was at least participating in the social situation.

Even though there were tears of joy streaming down my face, I wasn't out of touch with reality.

I said, we'll wait for tomorrow. Dennis will come down. Everyone seemed to be finding their way back to

their normal psychic equilibrium, save Dennis and myself. I was burdened with odd but wonderfully

expanded perceptions, while his wandering ideas and wild eyes indicated that he was having some

difficulty in getting his feet on the ground. After our shower and on the way back to the forest,

I mentioned all of these things to him, but he replied in riddles and with mimicry of dead relatives,

so that I could get nothing out of him. I continued to assume that a night's sleep would set him right.

I insisted that he rest in his hammock when we return to the camp, which he did, while the rest of us set

all of these things in order.

B