Sunday Evening

Selvin collected the two dosages after which he arrived at Dr. Smith’s doorstep placing his fingers on the doorbell. In a minute the door snapped open, Selvin entered an enormous drawing room filled with replicas of middle-age works and a few ancient masterpieces. A glass of water was the only hospitality offered, after which Selvin and Dr. Smith ingested three hundred micrograms of LSD each.
The clock ticked past five in the evening following which the two made their way to an open terrace, ready to greet the swiftly approaching sunset. An hour had passed since the ingestion, the external world gradually begun to take a very different yet fascinating texture, the sun had begun to set on a comfortably warm Sunday evening.

Selvin: Smith, have you ever thought of tiling your terrace?
Dr. Smith: Yes, but I’ve never bothered, why?
Selvin: I don’t like the patterns that the concrete offers, they’re intricate but I just wonder what tiles would be like.
Dr. Smith: These colorful textures Selvin, are they a fragment of imagination or are they materially existent?
Selvin: Even considering the sublime capabilities of the human mind, I doubt it has the power to perceive the non-existent, the imagination is strong, but I doubt these visualizations are fragments of imagination.
Dr. Smith: Then how can we conclude with a logical explanation? These are practically invisible in the sober state!
Selvin: Wrong, correct methods of meditation produce more or less the same, although the time factor plays a role.
Dr. Smith: Can you explain these patterns then, their intricate shapes and colorful outlines?
Selvin: These exist independent of the human state of consciousness. It is only when the potential of the human mind is unleashed that these enter the realm of the mind’s perception. But people are too busy living the conditioned life, where rules narrow the field of perception. They are unaware of the mind’s ability. These colorful outlines and figures and shapes are always present, always there, but escape the eye of the common man, because he is too caught up with his social worries, he is too busy trying to satisfy the world rather than satisfy his being.
Dr. Smith: Selvin, all that I perceived as reality till today seems to have toppled upon itself! Why is it important for a man to perceive such things when his prior purpose is survival?
Selvin: Your head is filled with false ideas my friend, the prior purpose of man was never survival, that’s a misconception. Life is a celebration, not a struggle. Celebration is written all over creation! Look around you, dogs aren’t conquering land and murdering for game! Every animal struggles only for its necessities, conquers territory only if it is nature’s requirement, it was never the instinct of man to shed blood to gain land and territory! That is a result of falsely driven intellect.
Dr. Smith: So now what? Are we to preach to the world about this revolutionary drug that reveals truths unknown to the sober mind? Are we to tell them that here is LSD, sacred, divine, one dosage to fill your mind with aesthetic beauty and stunning realizations? The sober mind sees a leaf as it is, but the influenced mind seems to see the universe as a leaf!
I feel that I understand, but I know I have not completely. Perception takes the form of an infinite entity!
Selvin: The leaf as it truly exists is the infinite universe in the leaf itself. The ignorant man fails to understand! You can derive the truth from a simple green leaf, you can ponder over it for a minute and realize the simple truth that it offers, but no man has that minute to spare, he is too busy in his mundane world, he is an idiot, we’re all idiots, we’ve been conditioned as idiots. And no, this drug does not offer something that the sober mind cannot achieve on its own, yet another misconception!
Dr. Smith: Do you remember the bedazzled Mr. Huxley mentioning Bergson’s concept in his ‘The Doors Of Perception’?
Selvin: The fact that the human mind is eliminative and not productive?
Dr. Smith: Yes, that seems to make sense. What a fantastic discovery! Seems true, the brain has a filter that removes all the information irrelevant to survival. The whole reason why our potential is never unleashed wholly but only partially so we would not waste energy on things irrelevant to survival. Nature, magnificent!
Selvin: Yes! and when we gain the ability to manipulate that filter we unveil the long-hidden mysteries of existence.
Dr. Smith: So I believe this is a necessity for man then, his route to enlightenment, a little dosage of LSD, seems such an easy shortcut!
Selvin: You would be an idiot to believe that Smith.
Dr. Smith: I beg to disagree, but sobriety never offered me any productive realizations but only a pile load of worry to support on my head. In addition to that I think the sober man indulges too much in mundane affairs, he is too obsessed with the material world, he gives his being absolutely no time, man is the foolish intellectual, the shallow intellectual, he draws too many lines, his life is revolving too much about the logical, he reasons too much, he’s forgotten the beauty of intuition, he denies the divine spark, like you mentioned, he is an idiot!
Selvin: All that you say I cannot disagree with, but you can not blame sobriety for the ignorance of one’s being and you cannot credit intoxication for enlightenment.
How can such an immense experience like enlightenment depend on an external substance? Enlightenment is the result of great insight and self-understanding, perceiving the true meaning of existence, to gain such things you cannot be externally dependant! Such an enlightenment would be false, a blatant lie! To think that these substances offer even a pathway to whole enlightenment would be a blemish! True, these are doors to the other world, but only temporary doors, you cannot depend on them, and a man who has not indulged in these has missed out on nothing!
Dr. Smith: So what are you proposing?
Selvin: The first step to enlightenment is reaching the state of egolessness, it’s the first and most important step, the steps after that happen involuntarily! An intimate connection with your conscience and a complete realization of your being and existence is what leads you to enlightenment! Do not blame the sober mind, blame the ignorant mind!
And don’t put your innocent faith and trust in intellect and logic and reason, they’re boundaries, nothing more, if we tie ourselves to the ground, how can we fly?