Neurochemistry: Harbin, Trippiness, Ecstasy

At Harbin today in the rain, I was exploring letting my vision go completely - softening the physical processes of seeing the world - in the pools, such that I began to experience the raindrops falling in the pools - inside my mind. If one softens 'seeing' deeply, the pools themselves can be a trip, with lots of naked people coming in and out, and many snuggling, or doing Watsu {Water Shiatsu} together.


I've been loosely exploring what tripping naturally would be like, - here at Harbin, but also as I travel around the San Francisco Bay Area and northern California. Vis-a-vis Ecstasy {MDMA}, I do explore related neurochemistry in the pools, naturally, again and again, but not always, especially not always when I want to. But over the past 9 months I've elicited a lot of bliss, naturally, especially while in the pools. Hallucinogenic and psychedelic experiences {like those on LSD and Mushrooms} are not so readily accessible to me, but I have explored them naturally as well. In particular, I've had them a little in a holotropic breath workshop at Harbin, and when Sophia was DJ-ing (disk jockeying, I think – spinning music disks – a pretty important role in the 1960s and 70s, too – which can create the musical 'magic' of a different time and space, and be very fun), and played music by 'Dunkelbunt,' and 'Nicodemus.' Both groups played music that was kind of wackily absurd, and very skillful musically, and, in the context of free-form dancing, I went to some pretty psychedelic mental spaces, - in the Harbin Temple. I sometimes experience this elsewhere, as well – while walking along the Harbin village path, from the meadow to the pool area, and back, for example; I'm not sure why. An 'opposite' experience is a kind of 'static' mental view of reality, that is 'realistic' and perhaps 'flat,' but not particularly enjoyable, although it can be, too. But I'd like to go further, and these experiences don't reflect the intensity of psychedelics or Ecstasy, as I imagine them to be.


I continue to be amazed in the Harbin valley at how much serendipity and synchronicity there seems to be, and how akin these experiences can be to trippiness, even 37 years after 1972, when Harbin was most recently purchased, with the 'revolutions' and freedoms and drugs in people's minds then, especially in northern California, but all over the western world, with a lot of travel to the East.




Time for the pools . . . and then back to Berkeley – too short a time at Harbin . . .