The Rabbit Guadrians ≈ The Vagina Monster ▼ The Strange Manifold

I took the train from Prague. In Děčín I met a sobering Estonian guy. He was trying to find an exchange bureau because he had no Czech money left. He seemed lonely and on the verge of tears and it seemed to me that he was one of these guys that run away from their feelings by numbing themselves with alcohol.

I offered him to exchange my Czech money for euro but he denied. I think he didn't trust me. I decided to help him find the bureau because he seemed tremendously lost. We chatted briefly. He was going to Dresden but felt too sick in the train. He worked at a burger place.

We found the bureau and he exchanged the money. Immediately after going out he said "Now I am going to have some Chinese food". I told him I need to go and asked him how he felt now. "What do you mean?" he asked.

- We found the bureau and you exchanged the money. - I said half-jokingly because I didn't want to bring up how distressed he felt earlier.
- I feel exactly the same. - he said with an expression so devoid of feeling that it became obvious he was repressing something into the depths of his soul.

It is possible that he might have influenced the trip, but it is also possible that modern society produces a lot of lonely men.

After that I went uphill to the chata (hut). The chata and garden were incredible - like something out of a fairy tale. It reaffirmed my belief into the mastery of the Czech people to create gardens. The place was just right for what I intended to do.

I dropped my luggage and went for a 35 km hike in the area.

30g of Atlantis Magic Truffles

I ate the disgusting truffles and lied in the hammock. As the sun was going down, fireflies started pulsing into the air. It was incredibly magical. Around 45 minutes after taking the mushrooms the first effect started to be noticeable.

Sometimes the mushrooms reveals itself to the voyager. This time it took the form of a fairy or a ghost. It was white and it didn't had a well-defined shape. It seemed to be leading me somewhere. It seemed obvious that this was going to be a good experience.

Somehow this experience didn't have a Come up phase. The peak happened right away and I had a very very long come down.

I went inside the chata and lied on the bed with my eyes closed. Immediately I started to hear things. It was an industrial music - perhaps somewhat reminiscent of Marylin Manson's best work (think Personal Jesus, Tainted Love, except somehow even more harmonious and interesting). The music was made of... well industrial sounding clicks and clacks - various metal on metal sounds in perfect harmonies weaved together in complex poly-rhythms. Easy to write about it - impossible to reproduce it.

As the music was playing loudly in my ears, high-fidelity images formed in my inner eye. As usual I am not able to imagine such complex images voluntary.

It was a bunch of anthropomorphic rabbits presiding and fixing a complex electrical grid. It was conveyed to me that their job was tremendously important. The grid was in constant flux, so their job too seemed to also be never-ending and never stopping. There was one more presence (possibly the mushrooms itself?) that was presiding over the rabbits and grid, however there didn't seem to be a hierarchical relationship.

I tried to draw what I saw in the best way I could. (see image)

As the visual started to fade (for my disappointment) I remembered one of my intentions - to have a bad trip. I know that the mushrooms very often comply with voyagers' requests so it was the perfect one to ask.

Immediately I was presented with a monster made of vaginas. It was as big and blocky as a 4-strories building. The problem was that instead of scary I found that fascinating and even funny. However perhaps the mushrooms was tapping into some deeply rooted fear. (My horniness for vagina leading to my death???) After the initial bewilderment I asked the monster "Should I fuck you?" which elicited an enthusiastic movement of confirmation.

This was the best the mushroom could do to give me a "bad trip". :/ I know bad trips are real and are really challenging but so far I never had a truly distressing experience.

After the experience with the vagina monster the trip extremely rapidly lost it's visuals. However it still held it's emotional potential. I cried a lot. The usual - relationships, loneliness, the traumas of the past. Crying was always a big part of the first experiences - they helped me process years of repressed grief.

I felt immense desire to express these emotions through music. There was awfully de-tuned guitar so I took it, did my best to tune it and then proceeded to make some really terrible music with it. I quickly lost interest in the guitar after that.

The experience was quickly becoming boring. This immediately changed when I went outside and looked at the stars.

The night was warm, and the sky was clear. I lied on the bench at the patio all night looking at the stars. They seemed so magical and full of meaning.

There I cried - again, due to the usual - a cry that lead to a deep relief so profound I remember it to this day. I realized that this was how we are supposed to cry. It felt incredible to cry like this.

Then I laughed. (I know - it sounds like I had a bipolar episode) Again - it was a laugh so sincere, it felt godly.

I rearranged how I felt about so many memories in my life. Memories that would usually lead to pain, were now seen as funny or inconsequential. Other ones seemed bleak. I was able to see my past through new lens that allowed me to re-evaluate everything with fresh eyes.

When the clouds started to cover the sky, they also seemed to have meaning of their own - except I couldn't figure out what the meaning was.

Usually when the mushroom is done with inner work, it quickly moves to what it deems more important - revealing the mysteries of the universe. The visuals came back to present me with a manifold. (Back then I was just calling it an object because I had no idea what it was)

The definition from wikipedia is:

> In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point.

What this means is that when you are inside it or on it's surface - it looks like the world we know and our intuition applies. However the whole thing might be incredibly complex globally - it may wrap around itself in weird and unintuitive ways. For example some manifolds are non-orientable. For example, if you are walking on the surface of a Möbius stip, you will end up in the same spot with your left and right sides swapped.

Another famous example is spacetime. Spacetime is a 4-dimensional Lorentzian manifold. It locally resembles the familiar space we are all familiar with but globally it curves in order to allow for gravity to work. (This is the core idea of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity)

The manifold I saw was teaming with complexity. There were parts of that seemed to go out and into it with ease and logic that whispered "higher dimensions". It was conveyed to me that the manifold represented something.

As the sun started to raise, the colors returned. I stood up from the bench to enjoy the garden. I discovered it had strawberries! I wanted to eat one so much, but the desire to share the magic of these strawberries overwhelmed my hunger. It was more important for me that someone else would hopefully experience the same amazement of these strawberries.

Finally I returned to the bench again. I wondered whether the mushrooms were still active. I closed my eyes and I saw another manifold. This time it was way more orderly - it seemed to weave into itself in regular black and white patterns like the stripes of the zebra.

I didn't sleep all night so I felt tired. Usually I am more socially conscious in a bad way after tripping so this might have been the case as well, but I don't remember anymore.

After researching what these objects were I started to study Topology in order to understand these manifolds.

The experienced improved my mental health.