AN EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL, EDEN

AUTHOR'S NOTES

The following speculative tracts contain a factual account and description of my hallucinogenic experiences from the years 1998, 1999, and 2000. Briefly, in that three-year time period, I went in search of Deity and wound up instead with a personal belief system - and a novel as a by-product.

My reasons for writing of my personal experiences are threefold:
1. I hope to inspire the responsible use of hallucinogens by creative artists and writers.
2. I hope to inspire serious and responsible exploration (clinical experiments, scientific study) of unconscious states as they relate to creativity.
3. I wish to contribute to the understanding of the creative process. In the speculative tracts that follow, I describe the images and ideas that filled me. By writing of them here and in conjunction with the fictional work, EDEN, I hope to provide an insight into how visions are weaved into a creative work and how fictional characters come to embody ideas.


THE IMPETUS-TO-LIFE: A SPECULATIVE TRACT ON GOD AND EXISTENCE

Seven years ago, I had an extraordinary experience. It would not be an exaggeration on my part to say that it led to the most profound events of my life.
This is what happened:

In March of 1998, I was accidentally exposed to a powerful chemical substance that opened the door to my unconscious and brought me into the full potential of my imagination. Subsequently, I took the substance forty times over a period of three years with a variety of encounters with unconscious states. Some journeys were mystical, states described by Blake and Christ and Carl Jung. Still others took me to places that lie beyond my abilities to describe, as though I entered other dimensions, alien terrains that contained objects unknowable in this world, this reality we've created through tacit consensus.

Throughout my adult life, I have written fantasy and science fiction stories that originated within the imagination; with this chemical substance, I lived my imagination. And when each journey ended, my unconscious receded like an ebbing tide that scatters little gifts - coins or shells or driftwood on the sand. Washed up in my consciousness I would find a story idea, an original thought, an outlandish image. These treasures I gathered up and put into notebooks. Still other journeys left me with philosophical fragments, which I continue to assemble. It's on the planes of philosophy and spirituality that I write here

What happened to me is only one man's experience. That is how I offer it here: as just one man's truth. And maybe that is what has been set for us all, to find and define our personal beliefs, as individuals, to discover what unique truth lies within.

In preparing myself for my spiritual search I listened to Classical music . . . religious music (Medieval chants, masses by Monteverdi, Handel choral works. . . . Mostly I made a conscious entreaty to my inner self that the doors opened would be spiritual ones.

I experimented like this for weeks, and each night-sea journey washed me ashore on some interesting islands. The ocean to which my unconscious brought me was definitely of a spiritual nature. On one island, I experienced Agape - love of humanity - love of the world and all the people in it.

Another island my journeys took me to has been described by many mystics. I believe it to lie on the same plane as Agape on a twin island that rises just a little beyond. Here I experienced the connectedness to all things. Whereas on the island of Agape you feel an outflowing of love for humanity, on the island of Connectedness you feel yourself merged with all Life, all living things in this world . . . a powerful experience but not an experience or direct knowledge of god. So I continued on in my voyages.

One night I lay on my chaise lounge on my deck, where I loved to go when I was journeying. It was early morning. Classical music played. I was looking up at the stars in the west when my truth came to me in a sad rush. I had a vivid experience of all the space amidst the stars and saw/felt/knew this void as empty. No god existed for me, no deity smiling benevolently down to light the darkness, none to keep the stars lit and the planets spinning. My inner truth was that there was no deity. I cried that night while staring into the space between stars, wept to fill the emptiness that filled me.

And yet I didn't give up my quest. I was still left with the puzzle of me, my life, and the lives of the people, plants, and animals around me. I still felt compelled to solve, for myself, the conundrum of life. Then, in the autumn, I had an experience that nearly shattered me. I arrived on a plane in a space where planes and space do not exist. No words can accurately describe that realm; its existence lies only in its experience - for how can you describe, much less comprehend, a non-realm of nonexistence where even the dark empty river of stars has disappeared. My mind nearly fragmented coming out of this non-state; to go there and return to reality can't fail to leave you changed. I had nothing, not even the sadness that my first encounter with a godless universe had left me.

And yet, out of the Nothing, came a minuscule something. When the voidless void receded, it left a tiny grain of golden sand . . . and like an irritant in an oyster, it grew. No personal god exists for me. No bearded Father to pray to, kneel to, or worship. Yet I believe an ineffable force exists . . . one that manifests in a flower, a cat, a human being. It is this force that arranges molecules into forms and breathes a moving energy into them.

My little pearl - this belief in a stimulus to life, an impelling force to existence-I call an impetus-to-create, an impetus-to-life. In science, the test of a theory is in what it predicts and discovering whether those predictions hold true. A universal impetus-to-life predicts that life will not be restricted to this planet, that life will be found on any world capable of creating and sustaining existence. I believe life forms that our minds can't yet conceive will be found to thrive, born out of the energies and molecules of alien worlds by a simple impetus, whose essence is to create life. Perhaps when we have proof of this impetus, we will seek to know it with our science, and someday we shall slip down the veil of creation and stand spellbound-in awe and wonder of this impetus-to-create, this impetus-to-life.

Ken Wisman

You may e-mail Ken Wisman at wismank@hotmail.com