management consultant with a couple of kids; I had vaguely known she
was into Eastern religion but had no idea she was a psychonaut, too.
“You need to be prepared.” Over grilled cheeses, she described a
harrowing onset. “I was shot out into an infinite realm of pure being.
There were no figures in this world, no entities of any kind, just pure
being. And it was huge; I didn’t know what infinity was before this. But it
was a two-dimensional realm, not three, and after the rush of liftoff, I
found myself installed in this infinite space as a star. I remember
thinking, if this is death, I’m fine with it. It was . . . bliss. I had the feeling
—no, the knowledge—that every single thing there is is made of love.
“After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only minutes,
you start to reassemble and come back into your body. I had the thought,
‘There are children to raise. And there is an infinite amount of time to be
dead.’”
I asked her the question that gnawed at me whenever someone
recounted such a mystical experience: “How can you be sure this was a
genuine spiritual event and not just a drug experience?”
“It’s an irrelevant question,” she replied coolly. “This was something
being revealed to me.”
There it was: the noetic sense William James had described as a mark
of the mystical experience. I envied Olivia’s certainty. Which I suppose is
the reason I decided I would smoke the toad.
• • •
THE NIGHT BEFORE my date with Rocío was, predictably, sleepless. Yes, I’d
come through these first two trips intact, grateful, even, for having gone
on them, and had come away with the idea I was stronger, physically and
mentally, than I had previously thought. But now all the old fears rushed
back, assailing me through the long fitful night. Everest! Could my heart
take the intensity of those first harrowing moments of ascent? What were
the chances I’d go mad? Slim, perhaps, but surely not zero. So was this an
absolutely insane thing to do? On the plus side, I figured, whatever
happened, it would all be over in half an hour. On the negative side,
everything might be over in half an hour.