[Psychedelics] Tripping in an Underground Cave System, aka "Psychogeonautics".

It's going to frustrate some readers, and I apologize up front but I will not say which cave. If you want to do this, and feel completely versed on the risks of caving in general (to say nothing of doing so while high out of your mind) then the way to do this is to get in touch with your state's caving organization.

They will have dues you need to pay, usually something very small, and some hoops you have to jump through before they will give you the goodies (coords for cave openings). That's as it should be, it forces you to read through materials on basic principles like packing out what you pack in and so on. If you do this once you're likely to want to do it twice, so it's worth really embracing the organization instead of dealing with it at arm's length just to get to a cave.

On the way there, I was very paranoid about hitting any deer that could jump out of the woods to the right of me. When you're driving over a ton of machinery it would be very easy to completely destroy the fragile life of anything that got in the way if your reflexes weren't fast enough. I understand this principle very well as it also applies to peoples' feelings. If you don't immediately recognize them and behave accordingly, you're liable to crush them and only find out what you've done days, weeks, or years later. This is a lesson I learned the hard way several times. It accounts for most of my major regrets so far.

In the interest of comfortable set and setting to ensure a good trip, I came in a set of clothing consisting of pieces either designed to be battery heated to begin with or that I'd added electric resistance heaters to. It all runs off of NCR1860Bs, the electronics guys will know what I'm talking about. This turns out to have been a waste, I massively overengineered a solution to a non-problem as is my habit. It was never particularly cold, and I didn't stay dry enough for the heaters to be any help. Even so I'm quite pleased with the earmuffs, which are also heated, and headphones. Making the prototype is easy, that's what happens when I am left alone with tools. It's monetization that baffles me.

I descend into the mouth of this cave, which is pretty steep. The rim is lined with lush green ferns, it makes for this heart breakingly beautiful scene. I'd taken the 2mg of 25C about 30min prior so odds are good that had something to do with it. This feeling of absolute heart wrenching beauty would return to grip me many times later in the trip. But crouching just within the opening, viewing my portal to the world of light, sound and commotion from below, I realized I was already through the looking glass. The only way forward was down.

Inward exploration has been an ongoing theme in my life. This is why the last trip I wrote up was an underwater one. When I was very young, I noted that an insect caught in a jar will first find the outer limit of the surface it's on, then climb it trying to reach the highest point. Every living thing complex enough to have a sense of up and down does this, it's a survival instinct which drives us to escape confinement. It's also what has almost completely dominated our exploration efforts.

NASA receives a pittance, don't get the wrong idea, but the NOAA's undersea exploration budget is something like five billion, annually. A couple million of which pays for anything to do with manned activity. Likewise with anything underground. Shoestring budget, often justified with space analog exercises. This happens with manned undersea habitat programs too, they have to justify their cost by showing that they can in some way be useful to manned spaceflight, as if that were the only important thing.

It is always sold to us as "Humans are explorers, it's in our DNA". Spell it out why don't you. Yes, we explored the limits of the Earth and then turned upwards, culminating (for now) in the ISS and soon a manned mission to Mars. That was all the hindbrain's doing. But why not subvert instinct and see where that leads you? I dunno, maybe I'm just a pervert. Seems to me that while everyone else is watching the skies, you might find something under their feet that they overlooked.

Psychonautics fits into this very well. It's one form of inward exploration. So is diving, caving, and VR. The universe is massively fractal, right? There should be just as much detail when you zoom in as there is in the 'big picture'. There's a limit to it of course, in either direction, but there's no wrong way to explore. No wrong direction to go, when you'll find interesting shit everywhere. It's just that right now we are lopsidedly funding instinct-driven exploration to the near exclusion of the opposite.

I now found myself in an immense chamber. There was the sound of rushing air periodically, as if the cave were breathing. Also the echoing sounds of water dripping. I found a (comparatively) dry spot, the embankment of a creek running along the lowest point. It struck me that this would be a source of fresh water, a means of carrying away waste, and with a little ingenuity a power source. Everything necessary for indefinite habitation.

During trips my mind will obsessively "colonize" the space I'm in, devising ways for large numbers of human beings to become permanent residents there without sacrificing modern comforts. I was helplessly visualizing how many floors you could stack in that space and how many beds, bathrooms, kitchens and so on despite knowing on a conscious level that this would defeat the purpose of the place, at least according to the caving organization.

I sat for a while just enjoying the CEVs, which in total darkness were also the OEVs. Anywhere I shone a light was waterbed style undulating madness. I felt very small in there. I began to conceive of it as the suddenly expanded braincase of our ancestors following the mutation of a gene controlling for the density of our jaw muscle. In chimps, it constrains skull shape as they develop. Their infants have high domed foreheads, like human babies, but the much denser jaw muscle chimps have passing over their skull deforms it as they grow into something more peanut shaped. The sudden expansion conferred no immediate intelligence benefit for obvious reasons. The brain had more space but evolution had not yet put it to use. It's thought that this trait was selected for because it made lady apes look neotenous. If you don't know what that's about, check your youporn search history and look for the pattern.

I'll also overthink fun when I'm like this. Instead of just having unassuming fun like any healthy person, on 25C it's like in order to better enjoy something (in this case the cool, somewhat spooky surroundings) my brain shatters into about a thousand five year olds and one very busy adult, like the Disney imagineer, hurredly constructing exciting themed experiences that the infant brains could be fully immersed in, not knowing any better. In my headspace it was like countless tiny brains in diapers, each presented with a carefully constructed stage in front of them with little actors, fans to create wind, sprinklers to create rain and so on, such that they were completely convinced of it and could extract the maximum fun from the idea.

I'd made the mistake just then of sitting on the glowstick in my back pocket. I say mistake because now there was a fascinating glowing object I could not easily conceal the light from and I knew it would command my attention going forward. Gripping this green glowing tube with my heated glove, itself illuminated by the temp indicator LED gave rise to some kind of transparently simplistic scifi plot. It only had to be complex enough to fool all the five year olds who were here to enjoy themselves. And it did. The movie went something like this:

Professor Scientist: "According to my calculations, this formula is much too radical for the surface world. For now, its mysteries must remain a secret." }:|

Villain von Mustache: "It's no use! Even with the formula, you'll never stop me from twirling my big bushy mustache! Not in time, anyway. Nyeh heh heh" >:3

Narrator: "Some secrets are so mysterious, they are better kept secret, for mysterious reasons. This Summer, dare to dig deep, and discover the secret....OF MYSTERY!??!?" >:0

The thousand or so five year old sub-intelligences ate it up. I found myself compelled to interfere. "It's so obviously fake. The bare minimum was put in that needed to be for it to convince you. Ask what the secret of mystery is for example. And what professor is named "Scientist"?

The sub-intelligences began to pout and 'grump around' like a bunch of grumpybutts. "You really think we're so dumb as to be fooled like that? If it weren't real, we could tell! It's obviously real because" with that, I demolished the little stage so they could see it for what it was. Many began to cry. "Well, okay, that's a mistake anyone could have made. I was never fully convinced. I won't fall for the next one." The voice sounded subtly wounded. I kicked myself. What was the crime I had jumped in to prevent? A bunch of kids taking shit seriously enough to have some unabashed fun with it? Then I come in, bull in the china shop, mindlessly driven to destroy their illusions without thinking of why. This compulsion is the other major source of regrets I have so far accumulated. It has given me reason to reconsider whether truth is most important to me.

In line with that, I started to see runic engravings lining the walls wherever I shone the light. I thought someone who sincerely believes in magic would get a lot more out of it than me. "But I'll bet that's what I'm seeing because that's what the environment suggests". Sure enough, the symbols changed to random ASCII as if to say "Good job, you got me, and once again fucked yourself out of a good time."

If I shone my light down at the pools of water, they cast an entrancing play of light and shadow onto the ceiling. It was sort of like a naturally occurring planetarium. Apart from the importance of keeping the details of rituals a secret, I could see why Mithraeums were always underground.

Shining my light at the walls, I was alarmed to see something a lot more detailed and involved than the runic symbols. It looked like red and blue lines, some dotted others solid, intersecting shapes here and there. Some human shapes, others just squares, triangles and so on. They pulsated intensely, like circuitry throbbing with current. I began to interpret them as instructions drawn in a combo of blood and "spirit".

Part of those instructions demanded my involvement but swore me to secrecy. This too sailed right into the huge perpendicular tower of "nope doesn't work that way" in my brain as I am not a dualist. However I wanted to go with the flow it always ran into these huge rectilinear blocks of blinking neon "physics doesn't allow this" that I couldn't rid from my mind. I looked more closely at the ghostly blue "ink" half the lines consisted of. "Here I am!" it seemed to say. "Spirit essence. Can you deny it?" but all I could think about was "How can I see this right now? Photons would have to bounce off of it, then hit my retinas. If spirits are immaterial, how do photons bounce off of them? And if not, then I cannot see them, so whatever this is, it's not spirit energy but something I am hallucinating."

I felt a strong reverberating sense of frustration and disgust. It's very familiar to me as I encounter it a lot from romantic thinkers. I do not mean to irritate them, I am just not configured the way they are. The instructions only became more urgent as I grew more dismissive. "I'm half native American, is that it? I've never done a vision quest or whatever. I look like any other white guy with black hair as I never let it grow out. If that's your angle, it's a dead end."

I got up and began to explore. There were places with a ridge, like a second story elevated up above the normal route, accessible if you felt like climbing some boulders. And I did so I climbed the fuck out of those boulders and just let myself enjoy it. As practice. It went pretty well. I resolved to do that more. This is when things took an unwelcome turn.

There were others in the cave with me. I saw a pair of wobbling head lamps approaching. I couldn't imagine how to interact with them, walking mass of electronics with a head full of psychedelics as I was. I was self aware enough to intensely appreciate that very big differences existed between how they thought and how I was thinking right now. Also while sober but for different reasons.

They passed right by me with a wave and a "How do you like it down here?" I waved back and said "Love it, I come every year. Just resting a spell." Total bullshit but exactly what they needed to hear to leave me alone. I felt guilty, like I was a replicant faking my way through the Voight-Kampf test but anything was preferable to strangers learning that I was leaving no ball untripped in a subterranean cavern with them. Tasers if I was lucky. A knee to the ol' mean bean machine if I wasn't. They bought it though. And didn't notice when I got up, all lights turned off, and began following them at a distance.

I couldn't tell you why at the time, just that I was doing it. I also found myself trying to work out the dude's body mass, probable calories expended to disable him and then chase down the girl, or if it was more efficient to kill her so she didn't run and then take on the dude she was with.

I recoiled. Why was I thinking this? I don't have a violent bone in my body. I use no-kill mousetraps and apologize if I have to swat a bug. It was just not me. And then as if the jig was up, something separated from me. I'd glimpsed it earlier, flowing along with the 'spirit circuitry', almost indistinguishable from it, but implanting the instructions to kill and be secretive about it.

"Alright, there's something here other than me. Show yourself." A few moments of silence, then chuckling. "You really are no fun. I'll bet nobody loves you out there. You'll be perfect for this. I'm going to level with you. From this day forward, you're going to hide just inside this cave waiting for people to enter. When they do, you'll follow them in, get them alone if there's a group, and kill them one by one or in pairs if you have to. Then you'll bring the bodies further into me, eat whatever part of them is necessary to keep you going, then tomorrow you'll do it all again."

Up until now I was reasonably sure I'd avoided a bad trip. And even at this point I couldn't really tell if it was going bad. I didn't feel frightened, just disgusted. "Fuck you. Why would I do that?" I felt some unseen mass swirling around me. "Because if you don't, I'll find a new instrument. He'll kill you, move your body further into me and eat you over the course of several days to keep his own body working so he can continue to do this for me."

The mass was not reptilian, amphibian or anything else familiar to me. Based on the sounds it was making, I want to say it was something like an immense cockroach. But when it settled in behind me, its breath hot on the back of my neck it was like some great beast, a wolf or bear or something, sucking in the cool air and exhaling hot smelly breath all over my back. Of course I immediately thought of turning around.

"No, don't look. The moment you look, I find a new instrument. The distinction between you and the meat which protects you at present will disappear. You know what that means, don't you?" At this point I felt very disturbed but not fearful. I don't think I really process fear correctly. I understand on a conscious level the possible consequences of doing something dangerous but it isn't "real" for me in a way that makes me feel anything. I had to be kept away from cars, trains and so on as a small boy because of this.

I guess to some extent it's why I find myself gettin' weird on high doses underground or for that matter under a lake, wearing a DIY diving helmet. I know full well it has backups upon backups and that A breach of physics or an extremely improbable series of failures has to happen for me to be in any danger. In a sense it's like I'm daring that to happen.

Like taking potent psychedelics and going caving, although I'd taken no end of precautions for that too. I could devote a whole post to my "magic bag" aka the "in case I am too high to find the car by sundown and have to spend the night in the wilderness" bag. It's got fuckin' everything, not just for survival but keeping shit charged so I am entertained. It isn't anything like a real bugbout bag, more of insurance against being hungry, cold and bored all night.

So I'm following those poor people, and this great beast is crawling behind me, its mouth/nostrils just inches from my shoulder. "Why are you doing this?" I quietly asked. "I'm no ghoul if that's what you're thinking. Just the Earth trying to balance itself. I'm the one you met in the forest." I thought back to the beautiful, bossy, mischevious forest entity that I'd encountered several times while thinking of the forest I often trip in as a boltzmann brain consisting of trees as neuron analogs, exchanging pheromones to signal everything from danger to lust.

How could it be? She was so boisterous, upbeat, raunchy maybe but well intentioned (being an embodiment of nature she was very preoccupied with reproduction and why I hadn't done so yet). Yet here was this gargantuan nightmare, either dwelling within the cave or the cave itself, demanding that I feed it corpses. It didn't match up. The forest entity I remembered had a doting, motherly affection for humans.

"It was a lot more special when it was just me and maybe five thousand of you. But now I'm absolutely caked with primates. I don't mean to come off all captain planet or anything but you've nearly killed off all edible wild fish stocks and acidified the ocean so that only giant jellyfish will thrive. The clathrate gun's in the process of going off and almost none of you even know what it is. I've tried everything. I had high hopes for Ebola but it's looking like you'll science that shit to death like you did the rest of me. I figure it's time to stop being subtle about it and just have a couple hundred thousand of you worldwide start feeding the rest of you into me until everything stabilizes."

Where before I'd thought of the cave as a lung or esophagus, and as a great artery I now recognized it for a digestive tract. That I myself was deep inside of. They say there's always a light at the end of the tunnel, but not this one. Just keeps getting narrower.

"Now you understand why you must do this. Kill those two. Don't waste energy, you need to live off of their meat for a while. There'll be an investigation. You can leave my confines during that if you must. But return afterward and repeat the process. Kill those who enter, cervical dislocation works best. You're surrounded by rocks dummy, use one of 'em. Then move their bodies deeper into me, there is plenty of room for at least a million. Then eat whatever is necessary to keep you going. Then do the same thing the next day. This is your life now."

I was on the verge of tears at the needless, absurd monstrosity of what it commanded me to do. I set off running away from the couple and back towards the entrance. I could hear the creature clamoring down the tunnel after me, outraged that I would defy it. I began seeing skeletal apparitions wherever I shone the light. Finally, I was delivered. The picturesque entrance to the cave was before me, in all of its captivating beauty. The looking glass through which I could still escape this subterranean nightmare. But something nagged at me. The thing that refuses to leave well enough alone: I looked back.

"BOO! :D Ahahaha boogity boogity! Got you didn't I? You completely bought into it. I had to make it a lot more complex for you but it really did the job."