The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss (39 page)

What I have written above is pretty much all I know about ESR. I didn’t understand the physics or the math behind ESR then, and I don’t understand it now. Nevertheless, the Teacher plainly presented this information as the basis of the “experiment” I was to devise. The ESR signal, it said, would be generated by a molecular complex formed between the DNA in the membranes of my neurons and the metabolizing psilocybin and harmine intercalating—that is, inserting itself—between the base pairs of my neuronal DNA. And here’s where the ayahuasca figures into the recipe, as my source of harmine.

Four decades on, we now know that the receptors for psilocybin in the neuronal membranes are proteins, a serotonin receptor classified as a 5-HT
_2A
subtype. In 1971, however, almost nothing was known about the molecular nature of neurotransmitter receptors; some people even speculated that transmitters might be short sequences of ribonucleic acids localized in the membrane (Smythies 1969). At the time, we believed the newly formed harmine-psilocybin-DNA complex would generate an audible ESR signal. What’s more, the Teacher explained that by listening for the audible ESR signal on a high dose of mushrooms, one could imitate this sound and thereby cancel out these harmonic frequencies, bringing about a chemical reaction that would cause the complex to drop into a stable, superconducting state.

Meanwhile, the harmine that had melded with my DNA would amplify its ESR signal and generate a stable standing waveform—essentially a hologram. And the hologram would begin to broadcast the information stored in the DNA, making that data both comprehensible to thought and open to manipulation
by
thought. If the experiment worked, one of us in the near vicinity would be turned into a DNA radio transmitting the collective knowledge of all earthly life, all the time.

Got that? One thing was certain. I was making creative use of the lesson in sympathetic resonance my high-school band director had shown me on the strings of my stand-up bass. Here is an excerpt from the (now barely legible) notes I scribbled madly just hours before the experiment:

The Opus can now be summarized briefly:

1. The mushroom must be heard.

2. The
yagé
must be charged with the overtonal ESR of the tryptamine via an amplified sound.

3. The [illegible] ESR resonance of the tryptamines in the mushroom will be cancelled, and it will drop into [a] superconducting state: the physical matter of the mushroom will be obliterated.

4. The superconductively charged psilocybin will pick up the ESR harmonic of the
yagé
complex: This energy will be instantly and completely absorbed by the 4-D tryptamine template. It will be transferred into the mushroom as a sound and condensed onto the tryptamines as a bonded complex of superconductive harmine-tryptamine-DNA.

5. The result will be a material object of fourth-dimensional superconductive matter, that receives and sends messages transmitted by thought, that stores and retrieves information in DNA holographic storage, and that depends on superconductive harmine as a transducer energy source, and superconductive RNA as a temporal matrix.

It is now possible to reconstruct the physical-chemical idea metaphor that we have evolved in the process of understanding this phenomenon, i.e., the fourth-dimensional rotation of matter…. It can be explained thus: The tryptamine complex that occurs in the mushroom acts as an antenna for picking up and amplifying the harmonic ESR tones of all tryptophan-derived compounds of all living organisms within its range; since the tryptamine undergoing metabolism is superconductive, this means that its range of reception is theoretically infinite, and the antenna does, to some extent, pick up a signal whose ultimate origin is the totality of living creatures; but since the tryptamine metabolism is carried on within the brain (or mushroom) at a very low voltage level, the antenna behaves as though it were limited, even though it is superconductive. It seems clear therefore that the signal, which in this mushroom and in this ecologically dense area can be discerned so clearly, originates in the ESR resonation of the
yagé
plant, though perhaps all of the biosphere is picked up and broadcast amplified via the
yagé
superconductive transducer. This understanding will clarify precisely what will occur at the moment of 4-D warp. Ingesting the
yagé
harmine will speed up the process of metabolization enough to amplify its ESR tone to an audible level; this ESR tone will harmonically cancel out the ESR tone of the tryptamines within the mushroom, causing it to lose its electric field and snap into a superconducting configuration. The
yagé
ESR will have keyed the mushroom tryptamines into a superconducting antenna; it is then ready to have the tryptamine-harmine-DNA-RNA compound being metabolized within the body condensed onto its charged template matrix. A microsecond after the mushroom tryptamine has been superconductivity charged, its amplified ESR wave will then cancel out the ESR signals of the tryptamines and beta-carbolines metabolizing in the body, as well as the genetic material. This will cause these compounds to drop into superconducting configuration and bond together, at the exact same time that they bond to the waiting mushroom template. This transfer of superconductive compounds charged within the body to a superconductive template prepared within the mushroom will not occur in 3-D space; no actual physical transfer will be visible, as the organically processed superconductive material will bond itself to the mushroom template
through the fourth dimension.
The result will be the work of works, that wonder which cannot be told: 4 dimensions captured and delineated in 3-D space. The Stone will be all things, but the elements which, superconductively charged, bind together in the fourth dimension to form it are among the most common natural products, and the function and place of each in the Stone can be understood. The Stone is a solid-state hyper-dimensional circuit that is quadripartite in structure: 1. Tryptamines, first charged in the mushroom to act as a grid-template on which the rest of the circuit is condensed. In the final Stone the tryptamines act as a superconductive antenna to pick up on all cosmic energy in space and time. 2. The superconductively charged harmine complex within the Stone itself will act as its transmitter and energy source. It is interesting to note that the same energy that sustains the antenna circuits in superconductivity will sustain the whole of the device: that energy will be the totality of cosmic energy turned upon itself through the fourth dimension. 3. The third component of the Stone is the DNA bonded to and resonating through the harmine. It will constitute the 4-D holographic memory of the device, and will contain and explicate the genetic history of all species. It will be the collective memory of the device, and all times and places and conceivable forms will be accessible within its matrix. 4. The fourth part of the circuit will be the RNA, which will also be superconductively charged. Through its function of self-replication turned through the fourth dimension, the RNA will be able to act as a 4-D, waveform holographic image, and give physical form instantly to any idea. It will perform the same function it has always had in an organism, the process of replication through time. But this time, replication will be subject to the whim of consciousness. Of course a molecule which breaks itself apart and produces two duplicates of itself has to be functionally without electrical fields and hence is of course superconducting.

Does any of that make sense? It clearly isn’t a carefully defined protocol for a scientific experiment. The words may sound like scientific jargon, but they are nonsense. It’s more of an incantation than anything else, a recitation of charged words and phrases intended to evoke a certain state of mind. Nevertheless, this was the information that was downloaded to me by the Teacher, a recipe for constructing a hyper-dimensional artifact that would bind four dimensions into three and thereby end history. An object made of mushrooms, bark, and my own DNA, welded together using the sound of my voice. The Teacher was blunt: “If you do this procedure, it will happen.” Build it, and they will come; more precisely, build it, and you will hold all of space-time in your hands, in the form of the stone. The philosopher’s stone—singing to a mushroom while completely ripped on high doses of psilocybin boosted with harmine from the ayahuasca—will make manifest the most miraculous object imaginable. Mind and matter will fuse into a hyper-dimensional object that is the ultimate artifact at the end of time, whose very creation brings an end to time, leading humanity to a state in which all places and all times are instantly accessible at the speed of thought. It’s crazy stuff. It reads like the ravings of an unhinged mind, and perhaps that’s what it was. There’s more:

There comes a time…that time has come. History will end in a few hours. The day itself has ordained the command to humankind: March Fourth. March Forth, humanity, to greet a new dawn, as you slid and swam and crawled and walked down the spiral chains of evolutionary metamorphosis to your final awakening. For this is the day when you will sleep no more: you have been blinded by the black veil of unconsciousness…for the last time. Why I and my companions have been selected to understand and trigger the gestalt wave of understanding that will be the hyperspatial zeitgeist is becoming more clear to me each moment, though I know I won’t understand our mission fully until the work is complete. We will be instructed in the use of the Stone by some infinitely wise, infinitely adept fellow member of the hyperspatial community; of that I feel sure. It will be the taking of the keys to galactarian citizenship. I speculate that we will be the first five human beings to be instructed in its use. Our mission will be to selectively disseminate it to the rest of humanity, but slowly and in such a way as to ease the cultural shock. It is also somehow appropriate that at least some segment of the species has an intimation of the implications and possibilities of this, the last cultural artifact. To many it was given to feel the stirrings of change, but to a few only was complete understanding granted in the final hours before the accomplishment: surely so that the last words ever spoken in language in the final hours of history can be a chronicle of the defeat of the oldest tyrant: Time. And so now, against all the probabilities of chance and circumstance, my companions and I have been given the peculiar privilege of knowing when history will end. It would be a strange position to find oneself in, if being in that position did not bring with it a full understanding of just what forces brought one there. Fortunately, as the phenomenon is an acceleration of understanding, one gains clearer insight into the forces that have bent space and time, and thought and culture back upon themselves to focus them at this point. Now I can look back upon my life spread before the scanner of memory and understand all those moments that have foreshadowed this one. It is easy to look beyond personal history to all of the events of history, and discern therein the prefiguration of this last moment. As a phenomenon, it has always existed and will continue, as it is a moving edge of phenomenal understanding that was generated with the first atom and has gathered momentum in a constant acceleration ever since. What we are moving toward in 3 dimensions is the passing of the wave of understanding into the fourth dimension, the realm of the atemporal. As it happens, it will make the transition through one of us. But there will be no change in the cosmic order, or even a blip on the cosmic circuits, for the phenomenon has gathered constant momentum from the beginning, and will flow through and beyond the fourth dimension with the same smoothness it entered, until finally it has moved through all beings and all dimensions. Its job will then be complete, when, in a billion eternities, it has constellated full understanding throughout creation.

There is rich material here for the student of pathology. I’m acutely aware of that as I read those words penned so long ago in an Amazonian hut by a much younger Dennis who was utterly convinced he was about to collapse, or at least transcend, the space-time continuum. The ravings of a madman, I’ll grant that. And yet, there is also poetry here, and beauty, and a longing for redemption. What I expressed is not that different from the vision articulated by the most compassionate and beautiful of the world’s religions: the universe will not achieve perfection until all beings have achieved enlightenment. Isn’t that what I’m saying? No doubt there is messianic delusion here; indeed, in passages a bit further on in that text I discuss my role as cosmic Antichrist. But there is also a deep wish for healing, not only of myself but of the universe. Our mother had been dead less than six months. I have to believe that much of what happened to us at La Chorrera was linked to that tragic event. So overwhelmed were we by the sense of loss, and of guilt, we were ready to tear space and time apart in order to reverse that cosmic injustice.

On the evening of March 4, Dave and Vanessa joined us for dinner at the forest retreat, but they wanted no part in our looming adventure. The sudden approach of a violent thunderstorm brought us all outside to stare agog at a massive, flickering cloud; then the wind and rain hit, and Vanessa slipped on the wet ladder as she hurried back into our raised hut, hurting her ankle. After the storm passed and Dave and Vanessa had departed, Terence, Ev, and I completed the experiment’s final preparations, as dictated earlier by the Teacher. We knew our success was assured, thanks to the strange signs we were given as the moment neared, from the intense lightning to the apparent breach of physical law, including the eerie steadiness of a tilted candle’s flame, our only light. These phenomena (or so we told ourselves) were caused by the shockwave of the continuum-destabilizing events, now just hours ahead, as it rippled back into the past like a kind of temporal echo. We were approaching the singularity. We
knew
we were going to succeed because, just a few hours ahead, we already had.