If it didn't mean what it did
it would be fucking beautiful, and I would welcome the sensation with open arms.

Apologies for length & trippiness. I'll bring you down soon enough.

It's like deja vu taken to its highest extreme - the sensation that one thing is another is everything else. It starts with a normal deja vu 'kick', the one you all probably know, but then the feeling spreads and intensifies.
The room doesn't go blurry as such, but the strange melding-together spreads to my vision, and it begins to seem like I can see all around me, in a 360 degree arc. But everything I see is based on what I'm looking at, as if my line of vision has expanded to surround me. And while I'm aware that things are separate, I seem to sense an underlying unity of things that is very much like the Buddhist notion.

Soon the walls are my memories (or what I think are my memories) are the words I'm hearing from those around me are one great swelling welter of united sensation that I have no choice to embrace. My heart is beating like crazy and every new sensation thrills and dances across my mind and or skin (they're the same thing), but at the same time I've already had it and have been having it forever.
It's no wonder that others who've had this experience have claimed to see God.

And then I crash to the ground and bounce and twitch across the floor like an electrocuted octopus, in what might very accurately be called a spastic manner. Which is less fun, especially when I wake surrounded by vomit and paramedics and a pounding bloody headache of Doom. Because this is the best I can do to describe the sensation that hits me when I'm coming up, not on acid or shrooms or eccies, but my own brain's stupid misfiring signals. Epilepsy for the lose.

So, the initial deja vu? A sign that somewhere in my brain, an incoming sensory signal has twitched off course and passed through a storage bank, making it seem like a memory. Raindrops that signal a storm. It's a very reliable warning sign, and one that instantly kicks my heart rate up an octave with fear.
If I'm on the computer, or watching TV, I will instantly shut it down, leave the room and go outside to a more calming environment.

And the glorious sensation of oneness that suffuses my experience, if I can't 'shut it down'? Yeah, that's Def Con Eppy. Look for somewhere soft and shout for someone sympathetic and lie down. It's beached fish impersonation time.

Of course, it's hard to navigate when you can see the hand of Yahweh in all things, but not the fucking door. I have literally no idea what I'm doing on these occasions, but I'm reliably informed that I generally spin in circles and my cries for help become incoherent babble. The great mixing bowl of signals in my head is throwing up a million crossed wires, and while the sensation is as close as I'll ever get to religion, I'd rather never experience it again.

So. Drugs. Basically, this sort of thing is what I imagine LSD or psylocibin might do to you, only it keeps going. If so, I can see why people do it - although it would get tiring eventually, wouldn't it? Even discounting the possibility of a bad trip, which with my psyche is highly likely.
I've never dared to do hallucinogenic drugs, even though I oh-so-want to, if only to recapture that sense that the universe has underlying content and therefore purpose. There are plenty of stories that back this experience of acid up. But, in the manner of a cargo cult, I fear that to experience it again would be to summon the epileptic consequences, so I don't mess with my brain any more than I need to.

Besides, if I did take those drugs, I'd be able to ramble on at even more length about the harmonic nature of things, man, and, let's face it, the beginning of this post was bad enough for that. Wouldn't have bothered if there wasn't a payoff and some vomit waiting for you.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Mon 20 Sep 2010, 17:23, 4 replies)

had an ex who was epileptic
he didn't bother to tell me until he had a seizure. i was terrified, didn't have a clue what to do to help him. if his mate hadn't been with us, i hate to think what might have happened.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Mon 20 Sep 2010, 18:45, closed)

That's actually one of my favourite japes
especially with new girlfriends. But new house- or work-mates are just as entertaining. You should see their faces as I flop and twitch around!
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Tue 21 Sep 2010, 8:43, closed)

pfff!

( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Tue 21 Sep 2010, 22:24, closed)

Blimey, isn't that a bit risky?
I mean, clueless people might try to hold your flailing limbs still (injuring you) or worse, try to shove something in your mouth "to stop you swallowing your tongue," and break your teeth.
( Crystal Magnet Like a diamond geezer, but better, Wed 22 Sep 2010, 12:02, closed)