Marita, a young woman who lives with son Colin and Joseph in the house next door, asked me if I had ever taken DMT. Yes, I answered, and yes, I continued, I encountered the “machine elves” — A phrase I had not known about prior to my own DMT trip. “I noticed myself being aware of this machine elf scenario, “I told her; my awareness was itself larger than the drama, so that I could, even while ‘tripping,’ be glad that the experience was only going to be about ten minutes long. For frankly, those mechanical beings bored me.

My friend wondered how I could be aware of DMT while it was going on. How I could separate my awareness from my experience? “Because I’ve been practicing for over 50 years,” I told her. Witness consciousness, I usually call it. And when maintained, can calm all troubled emotional seas.

And yet, of course, one can look at DMT, and other psychedelic experiences, of which I have had my share over the years, as evidence for the multidimensionality of life. In that way, even DMT is profound.

In my mid-20s, on my very first acid trip, I became aware that the world under acid looked and felt entirely other than my normal life. In fact, I’d date my graduation from dogmatic fundamentalism to that extraordinary experience. I went in a Roman Catholic; I ended up full of awe.

Not only is there not just one world. There are an infinity of worlds.

How to navigate through the vicissitudes life with this awareness?

That’s pretty much what I’ve been learning ever since.