The drug first became known to me as a shift of colors toward golden and rose tones. Pigments in the room became intensified. Shapes became rounder, more organic. A sensation of lightness and rivulets of warmth began sweeping through my body.

Bright lights began pulsing and flashing behind my closed lids. I began to perceive waves of energy flowing through an of us in unison. When I sighed with pleasure, others moaned in unison. I saw us all as a grid-work of electrical energy beings, nodes on a bright pulsating network of light. One of the other participants later reported the same visualization.

Then the interior landscape shifted into broad scenes. Dali-esque vistas were patterned with eyes of Horus, brocades of geometric designs began shifting and changing through radiant patterns of light. It was an artist's paradise representing virtually the full pantheon of the history of art.

Up and around us huge, mythic archetypes stood. They were sphinx-like, tall, ominous, shadowed, sometimes like the Assyrian and Hittite winged lions, then shifting through archetypes of temple guardians from old religions and from those of planets that I had not seen before -- ancient, alien cultures.

About an hour and a half into the trip I was seeing my visions with my eyes opened or closed; and I was travelling to other planets and dimensions. In each realm a religious ceremony was in progress. One one plane, there were huge, mantis-like beings that were wise, sepulchrally dignified, welcoming me with their ritual. On another plane, green, gold, blue, and purple beings that looked like small, crystalline insects shaped and re-shaped in kaleidescopic formations, sending me urgent messages of mute import.

Finally, a dimension appeared where all was crystal life forms, all were incredibly beautiful energy beings, on both micro- and mega-scopic scales.

Many in the group were experiencing wild hallucinations, but the themes of crystalline beings, Egyptian forms, and light-beings seemed common to many of us on later comparison.

The energy waves were radiating through me from a central, circular channel located around my pelvis. My thighs were shaking. If I stood up, I could direct the energy through my spine, and out through my limbs. During all of this time all of us could converse with each other at will. When someone entered the room, we could decompress to an ordinary level of reality. We were not overpowered, but self-guided. The vibrations did not have the annoying buzz of some LSD, none of the potential nausea of mushrooms or cactus psychedelics, none of the overweening love of psilocybin, but had instead an appropriateness, a calming centering, and powerful sense of peace. With me, it then slowly became apparent where the energy waves were coming from.

It was as though I were hovering, several layers of obfuscating reality above a great howling source of light. As levels of misconception, representation, illusion, consensuality diffused and dissipated like a clearing fog, the sound grew louder and louder. It was the sizzling of an arc-light of billions of volts, it was a roaring of a thousand suns, it was the sound of the universe ablaze. As it became more apparent, it was a huge, round ball that I was now orbiting. To call it white light would be to pale and daub this light monochromatic. It blazed with a radiance that was primordial, with an intensity that was absolute.

I came to know -- not through language but through innate cognition -- that this roaring explosion was life itself. It shrieked and pulsed through everything living, it was the source of the crystalline movement of life. It was the precursor to the original ball of starseed that exploded and created all that exists in our big-banging or, depending upon your cosmology, pulsating universe. And it flowed through me. I was connected with it as if by an immense shuddering optical fiber of not only light, but energy.

This was a pre-religious experience. Religion now seemed superfluous next to being in the presence of this source of life. Spirituality had become a limp representation of the fury and power of life. It was not awesome, it was awe itself. It was not godly but godding. It was not good, but was the way it was; it was the pure absolute that was not right, or loving, or benign, but was just the way it was -- life alive.

Of course one loves all other living creatures. Of course one feels that everything is all right with creation. Of course we are all united. We are simply all part of the fire of life. If this source of energy that flows through us did not exist, neither would we. Love, spirituality, and peace follow from this experience as surely as one breath leads to another. No big deal. It is merely our nature.

Most astonishing of all, I could remember this connection from the past. It was flowing through me all the time. I had felt it earlier in my life, as a child. There seemed to be a dim memory of the immense glory of life from my infancy. Do we forget this incredible birthright as we age? It did not matter, for I knew what I was.

As the high point of the experience waned, I began to have experiences more common to other psychedelics. My open-eyed visual field meshed into hexagonal geometric patterns. When I looked at my own or at another's face, we seemed mythic, glowing, young, timeless, peaceful. Moving hands through the air trailed beaded radiant energy patterns. Spoken sentences took on multi-levels of understanding and cosmic punmanship. Most reported a levity, but not toward giggles but toward a deep, powerful peace. "This is the drug we never took," said one. "This is the natural state of human beings."

All of our group integrated smoothly back into ordinary reality, frequently remarking on the profundity of their experiences. Some reported no visual hallucinations like mine. One never went inside, for fear of engaging sad memories. Several stayed exterior to their internal processes and conversed and visited with each other during the whole episode. Some exhaustion was reported by each. I would recommend a day of complete rest for anyone who takes this drug.