I don’t trip very often, but the sometimes are usually incredible, and a week ago I had perhaps the best psychedelic experiences to date. What made it incredible was not hallucinations but realizations– about the nature of reality and time and relationships and helping the world.

The story is long, but it deserves it.

I arrived at Wode’s house around 2 pm, and Fiddle arrived shortly thereafter. Wode is a friend from college, with a unique combination of laid-back and intent, with odd slow movements and expressions. Fiddle was a friend of Wode’s, a young resident of my old dorm with the unaware self-absorbance typical of the species.

We chatted. Wode mixed up mescaline for Fiddle, adding just enough water to the powdered cactus to make it like a bowl of stewed spinach. Fiddle spooned it into his mouth enthusiastically– it was his first food in over 24 hours– but tired when he still had a half a bowl left, half an hour later. At 3 pm, Wode and I took 25 mg of 2C-E, a relative of LSD. When Wode and I went to the Quik-Mart for a soda, I started coming up, and every aisle began to be its own world.

Over the next twenty minutes, my vision became facetted, like looking through ever-deeper layers of diamonds, shifting around my head. My mood was like a die, many times tilting further and further, until it toppled onto a new side. Every time the die fell, the air cleared and the world righted itself, and the die always seemed to show the number 3 looking slightly different. The facets merged and split, and the die began flipping faster and faster, and about 40 minutes in the changes seemed to fly by like a freight truck with me holding onto the tailgate by my knuckles.

Wode and I each had a capsule of 100 mg of MDMA at around 4, and Wode made some peanut-butter/pot/cracker sandwiches, which we ate around 5pm. I asked for something to write on, to explore my world and thoughts.

We talked about reading books. There are two extremes for interacting with books. One can move from one book to the next very quickly– even skipping words, paragraphs, pages. Or, one can study every word, making copious notes and underlines. It’s the difference between breadth and depth, and the mean lies between the two. I thought about how depth is one of my strengths, breadth one of Flame’s.

Similarly, one can take a more or less involved approach to drugs. Fiddle had been fasting for a day beforehand, and Wode almost as long. I asked Wode, as he put together the pot sandwiches, if he usually put so much into his trip– he planned to do six different drugs over the day. Yes, he said, he let himself want to mix in many different chemicals over the course of his trip, like fine details on a painting.

I decided to take my trip seriously too, especially if it was going to be so chemically involved. I approached the trip with a question. If I was embarking on this journey to the edge of the universe, it would be to try to bring something home with me.

I’d been struggling during the recent months with what I imagined was a new level of maturity– where I do more than create and participate in ways to help the world, but be a presence that draws people together. I posed the question thus: “How can I be a confident user of all my powers, as a man, upper-middle class, etc?” Aboriginal people used vision quests as a coming of age, and now I needed that. I devoted myself to that quest.

Meanwhile, Wode became progressively more involved in his nitrous whippets. He started around 3:30pm, and we told him he could only have four. He savored each one like his last, breathing it in and out through a balloon, and counting them down. He praised number for its reliability. Four whippets can be a hard limit because it is a number, even if nothing else can. When I took his nitrous dispenser away, it became even more the center of his attention. While Wode talked insistently about his nitrous, Fiddle gave occasional commentary on the digestion of his cactus. Fiddle and Wode both wanted to stay in-doors. I wanted to get out.

I abandoned Wode to his addiction and went out to the porch. We set a date for 7 pm– another number– because wherever we happened to be psychologically, at some point it would be 7 pm. I would return and join Wode for a few hits. It was a beautiful day, and I had yet to reach my peak.

I wanted to find a way to do better by the world. A deep understanding is the best basis for a new world, and I allowed that I might find something on my journey so powerful that I could devote a lifetime to giving it to the world. At the same time, I knew I could never make that decision while tripping; all I could do was collect the souvenirs and sort through them afterward.

I thought about Flame, whose absence I felt viscerally. Life with her was so good, and it inspired me to be the man she saw me as. She disapproved of the journey I was on, but respected my decision to take it.

I wondered, as I watched the world breath around me, am I different from my parents? I visit Europe and live in Brazil; I work from home and engineer new technology; I take drugs and hang out with artists. But love, maturity, social difficulties, personal victories? These are surely the same, even if we call them by different names. Culturally, we may have differences, but the phenomenological story is the same. It is this story that gives age its wisdom, even if the experience of being in one’s 20s today is very different from in the 80s.

Earlier we had talked about Salvia divinorum, a disassociative drug. Salvia strips away all sense of culture and identity, for a moment, and each story of its reemergence is unique: we are all houses, the world is all legos, life comes from a cliff. But the progress is the same: a single division grows first into a self identity and then into a world of almost endless complexity.

I thought about the actions I see in the world. The economy– a nothing we’ve given a name to– is just the actions of billions of people. And yet some people’s decisions have more effect than others. Who were those people, and how can I befriend them? One man cannot save the world, but a group of us can. The world needs every single person involved in making it better, and somehow– by systems we can’t see– many people can be motivated by the actions of a few.

What is our end goal? To keep the clock ticking along? If we don’t treat ourselves and the world well, the clock will break and its pieces will shower onto our heads. But what is the clock, and how does it work? No one knows.

Economists say that the world is money, and indeed money is a big part of the world. And yet, someone can be quite happy without any money, if they have some good friends, as Flame has shown me. The solutions I work on are based on the premise that the world is the internet, and yet many people live happily without it. The most enlightened projects on the internet are just new representations of friendship and communication. The interface may be different, but ultimately, the world remains composed of people. Anthropologists say the world is symbols, as the basis of both communication and understanding (structuring) our world. Money is a symbol, the internet is just a medium, and somewhere underneath these piles of paperwork is raw reality, almost out of sight.

I watched people pass in the sun, moving for no other reason than to enjoy the weather, but every one of them conceiving of and structuring their movement as a mechanism in the system of their lives. Changing the world is so hard because, like Archimedes, we have no place to stand.

I thought, I don’t know what the world is; I don’t know how to do good in it; I don’t know who I am. But I know that at the bottom, there are people. There is Flame and there is me. I texted her to tell her that I was thinking of her.

In doing that, I realized that I had the start of a plan to help the world. It’s a bigger plan than Virsona or the Travelers Network, or even my learning center plans, because its real in a way these systems cannot be. My whole life, I’d been trying to bring together the best people I know, to work together in making something great. Elsewhere, I’ve succeeded in little pieces– a few hours a week of something bigger than myself. But in relationships, I’ve been able to be part of something wonderful 24 hours a day.

My plan was Flame. If she and I could come together, it would be the most important project I’d ever worked on. It wouldn’t be easy, because our worlds and strengths are so different, but it would be all the more powerful for those difficulties. The purpose of the plan might not even be nameable. Like Simone de Beauvoir considered Sartre to be the most important project of her life, so maybe Flame could be mine.

I wanted to say to Flame, “Going through life with you rocks. I don’t have a plan for saving the world or reaching enlightenment, but I’ve got an idea: Do it with me.”

And I realized that I had just decided to propose to Flame. [Note: I didn’t actually propose to her, but we talked about it later.] It didn’t sound like what I thought a proposal was supposed to be, but I figured it never is, phenomenologically. People use the word “proposal” like you can buy one in the store. But the experience of a proposal is always more alive and unexpected. It is also appropriately named. The stereotypical proposal story has a man of systems meet a woman of emotion. They love, and yet for the man, life cannot be about love. So, one day, the man realizes that he wants to make a system that consists of himself and the woman, and make that the most important system in his life. He proposes the system to the woman, who laughs inside at the idea that anything needs to be proposed but says, yes, you may call us a system and I will stay with you.

But I was tripping, and I refused to make either such a decision or such a proposal before I’d returned to my senses. How long should I wait? Until tomorrow night, I decided, when I was no longer tripping and had time to reconsider my revelations in sobriety. Numbers seemed to be the solution: Eventually, I would go to sleep, and then later my clock would say 10 pm, and then I could propose.

I looked at my clock. It was 6 pm. I realized that my clock was another system in my world, and another creation. Time never seems to go at an even pace, but we structure our world around the illusion that it does. My reality was that I was not proposing now, that I was waiting. Time is just that– waiting. Like Lady Gregory says in Waking Life, time is us saying “Not just yet.” Before clocks, there was only the cycle of days and seasons. But cycles are systems; whether or not such events exist in the world, our conception of them is a creation.

I realized that time does not exist. Time is our way to put off living. I didn’t want to wait any more. Let time dominate another man’s life– mine would be dominated by action. But I would need to sleep before I proposed, and that meant going home. I went inside to tell Wode I was leaving.

I explained that I wanted to go, that I couldn’t wait any more. But as I said it, I asked myself, why am I here? If time doesn’t exist, why have I created it by putting this moment with Wode before a moment with Flame? Why not embrace the now, stop putting off living, and be with Wode?

Who was Wode anyway? Maybe he was another of my illusionary system. I had created him, as I perceived him, and put myself into this moment, as a manifestation of whatever I am. I could push him away, but only at the expense of pushing away myself. The entirity of my existance was this moment, where I created Wode, my counterpart, and pushed him away. Wode said, “Wait, I just realized, it’s me and you!” He seemed to be calling out to me to stop pushing myself away through him. Why not embrace myself?

I was torn, but a light broke through my confusion. “No. Flame. There’s Flame.” I said, and stumbled out of the room and out of the house.

As I walked, I realized we create the entire world– every detail. Our whole conception of what we are as people and what the world is composed of and how it works is only an illusion to keep ourselves from confronting the primality of our being. Most people have the illusion of time. My world is filled with illusions– money, states, the internet, Myers-Briggs, people passing me on the street.

I began to see through the veil of space and time. I was like an amoeba, with the illusion of the world wrapped around me, without any known location or form, taking in primal sensations and creating a world from them, no bigger than my amoeboid skin. Such was the phenomological experience of all sentient beings. I half expected the world to dissolve around me with the revelation, and was surprised when it held together.

I arrived at my house and sat on my bed, ready for sleep. But wasn’t even sleep a choice– a choice to pretend to shut off only to turn back on again, a cycle we create? Sleep is nothing but waiting in disguise. I could not wait, give into that illusion. But I would not propose to Flame now.

I arrived at a moment of choice, and in a world I created the only question was how true I could be to myself. I could embrace the now: it consisted of me already being with Flame in the guise of her absence. But I did not want to live eternally in her absence. Or, I could embrace the fact of absence and shut off forever. That was death. I could be the man who died on the eve of his proposal, because he was so true to himself that he could not wait.

But, fantastically, I didn’t die. The eternal moment continued. I realized that all of eternity would be this, and even if time did not exist, this moment would never end. There would never be death for me. My sentience would stretch out forever.

If I have all of eternity, why not try to help the world? That would mean using my computer, which was back at Flame’s. I got up and started out again.

I could feel my body and the world beating with each step. Every step– every passerby, every house door– was a new invitation to embrace, and instead I passed by and pushed away. Our illusion endlessly shows us our fundamental flaw. I could go find Flame– but then why did I create Wode? Why was he so near, rather than Flame? Wode must be a part of my fundamental illusion. All my existence, I would be reaching toward Wode, or Flame as they might be the same, and simultaneously pushing him away. Time does not exist– I can swap out the illusion of Wode for another illusion, but I would only be buying time. The world is nothing but the fundamental illusion of our lives.

I wanted to see through the illusion of reality, but I wanted Flame to be behind the veil, not Wode. I arrived at Flame’s, but the door was locked, and I only had the key to my own house. My fundamental illusion reappeared in the guise of a locked door.

I paced. I couldn’t get in. I couldn’t wait. I thought, it I wait, I might realize that Flame is even more of an illusion than Wode ever was. I texted Flame to say I needed her. She called me back, and I was home.