First Acid Trip

By Max Harstein

From a letter to a friend.

Remember the story I told you about my first acid trip? I pulled aside the veil between the conscious and the subconscious and went through a vivid memory trip down my spinal cord in which were buried thousands of past lives, and did so backwards and forwards in perhaps no more than twenty minutes. My spinal cord was contracted and was bending me over backwards.

This happened before I knew you, quite early on when the government was experimenting with acid sometime in the 50s. It was a sugar cube in coffee. I knew nothing about this stuff and it was still legal. All my life I had wanted to KNOW, really know, about reality, life, existence and the human condition, and as you know, acid (which I no longer take) gives you what you want it to. So I had this strange trip, or bad trip as I thought then.

These lives went past at an incredibly high speed from death to birth going backwards. It was very hard to decipher at first, but after a few times (lives) of repetition it became familiar and not strange at all. Thousands of lives all going from death to birth, over and over again, every detail of each life played out like a movie in my mind. I would still see, but this imaginary image was brighter than what my eyes saw. I went back all the way to the slime; the soup of one-celled animals or aniveg amoebas that started it all. Then the movie turned around and went forward again at the same rate of speed as before. To normal vision this isnt even a blur, it just cant be seen. Its going too fast!! Of course it would have to be going this fast to facilitate its occurrence at all. It was unbelievably fast but so detailed that I couldnt have been making it up. Almost all if not ALL these lives were snuffed out in the acrid smoke thick smoke choking smoke of disappointment!!!!

There was one longer, noticeably longer, space in this long series of very short movies going backward and forward. Im sure I told you that I was sure it was the life of Moses. This forbidden experience has taken all this time until the caring for my mother to understand. It now appears that that experience was the physical fact of evolution and the actual demonstration of how it happens. The history of the structural evolution of my personal DNA from the very beginning until this lifetime (then).

This trip was so difficult and fearful that I have never wanted to take it again, and so I never did. You and I went on trips that related to what Im writing you about, but we never got on THAT path together. I remember watching our faces (your face) change into different faces which I shall now call karmas or incarnations. I was watching it in your face, you were watching it in mine, but it was an external phenomena. We werent going through it, we were saving each other from going through it by reading it in each others faces and not experiencing for ourselves what we were reading in each others faces and/or eyes. Remember? This, it would appear, is the full expression of NATURE as it relates to us. The natural phenomena, the natural law. THE REAL NATURAL LAW. Oh well, maybe not. Anyway, having experienced this, I now realize that I (and you) have experienced death many, many times, in this life and in our previous lives. What this means is that death is not the end but rather the beginning of our next life. Why am I telling you all this? Well, because first of all you have been my good brother, the major fellow traveler on these psychic back roads of life in my life, and because of how much comfort I have been able to give my mother who was (until I started to talk to her about this stuff) terrified of death. She was scaring herself to death, literally.

Now, only now, am I beginning to see the immense value of the psychic experiences I have had. To be able to face death countless times without ever having to kill somebody or be killed by someone else, but mostly the former! What a great, great, great giftto be alive and not fear death! To understand that death (too) is just an illusion. THIS IS LIBERATION!!!!

Even so, I cant see taking anyone else on this trip or taking it again myself. I dont think at this age I could survive it. But it sure was a GOOD trip (now) and I wouldnt have missed it for the world. It makes all this demonization of drugs seem like so much fearful crap!!! Which is exactly what it is!!!

Im now sitting in my favorite Starbucks having my daily espresso. Ahh, caffeine! I wonder how long it will still be legal? Actually there is a growing movement for legalization of marijuana. Moms old group of Womens International League for Peace and Freedom has endorsed the Medical Marijuana Initiative petition and is going to collect signatures and thats a first. Ive written a short book called The War on Dugs: The Worst Addiction of All. Im working on a screenplay to follow the same theme. It starts right after Nixon got in. Remember, the Feds came over and confiscated some of your property and all your money, Im not planning on including that, but Ive got quite a story going. Its about two-thirds done. Ill send you a copy when I get it finished.

So I made this great inner discovery about myself while I was trying to comfort my moms fears. Something I always knew, but I didnt knowI knew THERE IS NO DEATH . . . ONLY LIFE and everything is life, even death. Now thats real close to the fairytale all those pious bastards have been trying to tell us. Just seems like they dont really understand it, or how it works. Too much indoor time, I guess.

31
Dec
2002