Trip III came two weekends later, and it was what I can now only call a "Mistake". (I include it in this chronicle only because of the hard lesson learned.) That Sunday, a friend of mine came over to have a beer and hang out, and I suggested that we take a half of a mushroom each, and enjoy the buzz. Since I only had one large mushroom left, I made the offer as an experiment in using the shroom in a strictly "fun" setting. This one-half of a cap was slightly more mushroom than I had consumed on Trip II (this was a very big mushroom). It was immediately a disaster for me.

This fellow is quite a bit younger than I am, and an ex-Navy man. The talk eventually turned to guns and other (for my taste) negatively charged things that set me immediately on edge, my antennae on Red Alert. There was even a tinge of sexual tension in the air, something I (normally) wouldn't have been averse to pursuing, although the image of Robot from Lost In Space flailing his arms shouting "Warning, Warning! Danger, danger, Will Robinson!" did pop into my head to bring me to my senses.

Luckily, my young friend is the kind of guy who needs to be active when he trips, so he left to go play tennis, while I spent the next three hours lying on the couch, breathing, attempting to keep the trip to a minimum. I was not in the right space for this, and I learned a valuable lesson: Do not take these experiences lightly! Do not use the mushroom in a frivolous manner! The feelings of malevolence that permeated the later stages of Trip II were amplified in Trip III, until I began to hear the insectoid chatter almost non-stop. I played music to distract my attention from the chattering sound of the cosmic dental drill, but the music itself seemed to be a subliminal, slowed-down version of the chattering. It eventually faded as the three or so hours passed in which the shroom metabolized out of my body,

I was numbed by the severity of my emotional response to my friend's input. It definitely seemed to trigger the uneasy feeling of malevolence that I experienced in the presence of the Sucking Insectoid Whatevers. Another friend with whom I discuss these sorts of things said (rather nonchalantly, I thought, at the time, too) "So...you met some Suckers, eh?" Then, like a crusty old trooper, he proceeded to pull out a Michael Harner book and pointed me to a passage in which Harner describes seemingly hostile alien pressences (who claim to be the true Masters of the Human Race) to the shamans he took his trip with. They say "Oh, them...they're always saying such things...they're only the masters of the outer darkness..." The hair on the back of my neck stood up again.

I have spent the past month trying to piece together just what this amalgam of experience points to. A one-liner I often use to describe it is "Don't go into the light--it's a trap!". My encounter with the Insectoid Suckers certainly made me re-evaluate things (More on that in just a bit). However, the reptilian presence that filled my body during Trip II seems to fit the description of an impartial, or, more accurately, disinterested, Gatekeeper or Door-Warden race of beings who have guarded the Doorway to The Unknown for eons--are these the dragons with whom the alchemists and wizards have conversed for centuries? Did they encode their "key" of emotive cues and responses that unlocks the door to The Unknown into the Kaballah? Did these great Reptilian dragons also program their ancestral memories into the tiny little spores of Stropharia cubensis, sending the shroom out into all space so that they might live yet again, whenever anyone eats the mushroom, thus truly making them the Gatekeepers? All I know is I have an awful lot of reading to do.

OK, so how does Mahler tie into all this? A morbid fear and serious feeling of hopelessness sank into me over the next two weeks, My job (sweat-shop night-shift work for an evil mega-corporation) had become increasingly more "stressful". In fact, the entire situation became rather hostile. The emotional quality to the proceedings seemed to be tinged with the same sort of inorganic malevolence that I perceived in the
Insectoid Suckers, OK...call me paranoid, but...WHAT IF:

What if the Ultimate Deception has been perpetrated upon mankind since time began? What if "God" were simply the butcher at a hyperspatial grocery store patronized by a race of beings that feed on the emotional energy of nicely fattened stock (humans)? What if, at the end of a life filled with emotional upheaval and strife, you die and are "taken home by God"...more like taken to the kitchen by Chef Andre..."Go into the light. . . God is waiting for you in the Light!" Yeah...waiting with a butcher knife!

What if humanity has been nothing but breeding stock to feed a race of inorganic creatures who need emotional energy for sustenance, but cannot generate it for themselves, and must therefore consume it? Just a thought . . . just work with me here...why do the members of the "ruling class" seem to be (mostly) devoid of emotion or personality? Why do they seem so flat and emotionless? Why does the world look more and more to me like I have accidentally found a pair of Rowdy Roddy Piper's magic sunglasses from "They Live"?

The one thread that I could cling to in the midst of the turmoil of the last several weeks hinged on the fact that I was certain of one thing: there is more to the story than I have deciphered at this time. I am still processing through this set of experiences, and I know I'm not done yet. I chose to get down into some readable form my impressions and tenuous conclusions drawn thus far. Today is June 23, 1996. I am still acting under my self-imposed moratorium on more tripping until I feel I have fully integrated what has happened so far, although I must admit the urge to trip has been nibbling at me as I have been writing this account. I am beginning to regain my adventuresome Hobbit spirit as time passes, but I am still feeling cautious.

OK--back to Mahler--"Dark is life, Dark is death!" I have come to view Mahler as a true modern visionary--Mahler saw the end of time. He saw it, and he put it into his music. His Sixth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde show Mahler's spirit perfectly capitulated into musical language. The essence of an approaching Eschaton, and a lowly, yet passionate, Everyman's reply to it.

Mahler was the original Modern Everyman. McKenna talks of an approaching Eschaton, perhaps purposefully engineered into being by those pushing for a New World Order, to invoke a new religion worshipping the teachings of the UFO and its inhabitants. Just who are these inhabitants? And why does all the New Age foo-fooery stress feeling love, and "going into the light"? Must one spend one's entire life hurting at the hands of unfeeling mercenaries, hoping that there is a reward at the end of it all? And is the "reward" waiting at the end of it all "Going into the Light" or The Grand Deception?

Dark is life, Dark is death!