Paradiso, Canto 34, Gustave Doré (1868)
“As long as it is, Dasein always has understood itself and always will understand itself in terms of possibilities.”
-Martin Heidegger
“Apply yourself to entering your interior chamber and you will see the celestial chamber. For it is one and the same door open on the contemplation of both. The Ladder of this kingdom is hidden inside you, in your soul. Wash yourself of your sin and you will discover the degrees by which to ascend.”
-Isaac the Syrian
Volume 3
Chapter 1: Anchors of Being
Gravity
It has been a long time since my last LSD experience. I was looking forward to a joyful return, a sense of wholeness. Instead, I found my set and setting less than ideal, and I was greeted by anxiety and uncertainty. On reflection, perhaps that outcome was appropriate. Maybe I should never have expected anything else, because altering one’s reality is far from simple. Exploring the unknown brings inherent risks—including danger and anxiety—though these risks are often less dramatic than people imagine. My visual field isn’t warped; I’m not leaping across “dimensions.” Instead, the very structure of my thought—what shapes my experience at its core—feels like it’s being torn apart. Yet these changes aren’t necessarily destructive. It’s as though the floor tiles under me begin drifting apart, and I discover spaces between them. One might assume there is nothing in those spaces, a void akin to emptiness or chaos. Yet there may also be some other reality altogether lurking there. This idea of a “hidden reality” beneath what we see is a motif that religions frequently address. These substances don’t create that fissure; they merely reveal a crack that was already present, however subtle. They widen the gap, leaving me with the choice to plunge through—or not.
The hero’s journey, a universal motif in myths where the hero undergoes a transformative “ego death” and returns with newfound wisdom, came to mind again, especially when I reflected on writing the first volume and having my first religious experience. In each case, I was right at the edge—barely clinging to the “floor tiles” I’d always known. I initially believed that if I really chased the truth—the proverbial red pill, I would go insane. It felt like a binary choice, a moment of either letting go and falling or frantically holding on. That sense of choosing between “giving in” or holding back is common in high-dose psychedelic journeys, often described as ego-death or, in Jung’s terms, psychic death. Going insane, in my mind, symbolized a kind of death because I couldn’t envision anything more terrifying—losing my identity and fracturing reality, which is how insanity is typically defined. Moreover, “merging with the truth” evoked an impression of merging with God, and I worried that would turn me into a “believer” and make me irrational, like “those” religious people.
I see now this concern about “belonging” or “not belonging” is central to many hero myths: the hero is an outlier who doesn’t quite fit in the world he started from. In the film symbolism that inspired me, that outsider status is partly driven by loss. The hero’s daughter is gone, so the center—Earth—no longer feels like home, making the periphery (outer space) all the more compelling. It’s that willingness to move away from safety that underscores both the hero’s uniqueness and the danger of traveling into unknown realms.
I’ve often wondered why my spiritual experience lacked the typical feelings of oneness or egolessness that many people describe. Maybe I never fully allowed myself to experience them. I clung to the narrative I had constructed around myself and resisted stepping outside it. In many high-dose psychedelic trips, the initial phase often involves losing one’s sense of self and unmasking various personas. Intellectualism lies at the heart of my identity, and I could feel it melting away. It’s fascinating how this pattern appears in different cultures and belief systems—it’s a signature theme of comparative mythology. In the hero’s journey, ego death is a pivotal second phase, wherein the hero surrenders before returning to share something valuable with the community. We see a similar trajectory in Eastern mysticism, often interpreted as the replacement of personal consciousness with a universal consciousness, as well as in Christian mysticism, where the soul is supplanted by God’s consciousness. It is also evident in many rites of passage, particularly those marking the shift from adolescence into adulthood, as depicted in Campbell’s hero’s journey. The fact that this idea of identity loss recurred so vividly, even while I felt anxious, underscores the universal nature of the transformation. Despite the cultural differences between, say, Eastern mysticism and Christian mysticism, both traditions speak to an experience of dissolving the self in order to access some deeper truth. My own intellectual core resisted that dissolution, but the pull remained.
The recurring imagery of the white rabbit was especially striking because I felt, in many ways, that I was re-living my original religious experience. Like Alice following the White Rabbit into Wonderland, or Neo awakening to the truth in The Matrix, this symbol beckoned me towards a deeper understanding of myself and the world around me. It felt like a call to adventure, a pursuit of knowledge that resonated with the innocence and wonder of a spiritual rebirth. This supports Grof’s assertion that psychedelic journeys follow a certain pattern or sequence across multiple experiences, and that any incomplete stage can cause a kind of fixation until one works through it. He suggests that these experiences are not isolated events but interconnected steps on a deeper journey of psychological and spiritual exploration. According to Grof, when a particular stage remains incomplete—when its emotional, intellectual, or existential challenges have not been fully resolved—it can leave an individual “stuck” in that stage, resulting in fixation. This fixation isn’t necessarily overt or conscious; it might manifest as recurring themes, symbols, or emotional struggles during subsequent experiences until the individual finds a way to work through it.
Reflecting on this idea, I began to understand that my recurring imagery of the white rabbit might symbolize an unresolved stage of my own journey—one tied to my early encounter with the numinous. The term “numinous” was coined by theologian Rudolf Otto to describe a unique, non-rational experience of the divine or sacred. Otto characterized the numinous as a mysterious presence, invoking a simultaneous sense of awe, dread as well as fascination. It is a feeling of being in the presence of something wholly “other”—beyond comprehension or ordinary experience—often accompanied by a profound awareness of one’s own smallness or finitude. It felt as though I was being invited, perhaps even urged, to revisit and further explore that formative experience, to confront aspects I had not yet fully understood or integrated. The white rabbit wasn’t just a guide or a destination—it represented the unfinished work of making sense of my place in life.
This experience also brought with it an unexpected sense of kinship with theologians, a feeling I had never consciously entertained before. I’ve never considered myself religious in the conventional sense, nor have I identified with any particular faith tradition. My intellectual alignment has always been with the scientific perspective—rational, empirical, and grounded in observable evidence. Yet, during this experience, I found myself questioning whether this perspective was sufficient, whether it could truly penetrate life’s deepest mysteries. In that moment, I felt an almost magnetic pull toward something else—a recognition that understanding the divine, or the ineffable, might require a different kind of inquiry altogether. The imagery that came to me was vivid and deeply symbolic. I envisioned a vast, endless procession of theologians, each one devoted to the pursuit of truth and the lifting of the veil that obscures the divine. In this vision, I saw myself standing at the very end of the line. It wasn’t a literal sense of reincarnation or a belief that I was physically connected to these individuals, but rather a profound recognition of a shared purpose. The procession felt timeless, stretching across centuries and encompassing countless seekers of wisdom, all united by their drive to confront the unknown and bring meaning to the ineffable. I understood this vision not as a claim to uniqueness or importance, but as a symbolic representation of my aspiration to join that lineage of seekers. My position at the end of the line did not signify an endpoint or culmination, but rather a connection to those who came before me. It was an acknowledgment that my journey, however personal, was part of a larger human story—a story of individuals striving to understand what lies beyond the ordinary and to reconcile the mysteries of existence.
I recognize that such thinking can be precarious. It can veer dangerously close to messianic delusions, fostering a sense of grandiosity or paranoia if not tempered by humility and self-awareness. But that wasn’t the case here. I felt no sense of personal elevation, no belief that I had been endowed with a unique gift or divine insight. Instead, I felt a quiet sense of belonging, of continuity. My place in the procession was not a claim to special knowledge, but a reflection of my aspiration to approach life with the same reverence and curiosity as those who came before me. It was a way of situating myself within a historical and symbolic context—a recognition that the questions I grapple with are not mine alone but part of a shared, enduring human endeavor. This vision was deeply humbling, not exalting. It reminded me that the journey toward understanding is not about individual achievement or glory. It is about contributing to a collective effort, one that stretches far beyond any single lifetime. The white rabbit, in this sense, was not just a guide for me personally—it was a symbol of the eternal pursuit of wisdom, a pursuit that transcends time and individuality.
During my earlier religious experience, which I wrote about, I expressed a sense that I wasn’t smart enough to understand God. Sober, I can barely recall the specifics: what computation meant, why intelligence was necessary to grasp “God,” or even how I conceptualized “God.” But in the moment, these ideas felt self-evident and undeniably true. This recent experience echoed the first one, provoking the same impressions and certainties. Again, I predicted I wouldn’t be able to articulate them fully later, that I would forget once sober, which is exactly what happened. Because I felt intellectually limited, I symbolically refused the “red pill” yet again. A wave of relativism washed over me as I questioned the point of chasing “truth.” Anxiety overwhelmed me; I lay in bed, panicked, and called my girlfriend for support. Though I can’t fully retrace my mental steps now, I came to a crucial realization: the pursuit of ultimate truth was irrelevant. It didn’t matter whether I took the “red pill.” What mattered was the meaning that unfolds here, in our human world and in our relationships—friends, family, loved ones. That sense of meaning, I realized, is what anchors us (a clear nod to the film’s symbolism). I even tried to persuade my girlfriend, and by extension my sober self, to stop taking LSD. The “truth,” I argued, was unreachable and might risk everything I hold dear, possibly leading to insanity. I already had everything I could want: a loving partner, good friends, and a supportive family. That insight was profoundly cathartic, dissolving my anxiety and replacing it with a sense of wholeness, though I never truly underwent full ego dissolution.
I recognized my thirst for truth as an inescapable feature of my psyche, not something to be dismissed in purely Adlerian terms of feeling inferior. Rather, it seemed biologically ingrained—an evolutionary endophenotype, a fundamental characteristic developed in response to the environmental pressures faced by our ancestors. This trait, invisible to the naked eye yet profoundly influential, bridges the gap between my genetic inheritance and my outward behavior. It’s a deep-seated drive, perhaps akin to Jaak Panksepp’s “seeking affective system,” which he identified as one of the core brain systems responsible for motivating essential emotional behaviors. This system, he argued, fuels our inherent urge to explore, to engage with the world, and to relentlessly seek resources and opportunities—ultimately, to survive and reproduce. In my case, this manifested as an insatiable curiosity, a yearning for knowledge and understanding, much like Spinoza’s conatus, the inherent striving to persist and flourish. This drive for truth, so fundamental that it echoes the “openness to experience” trait in the five-factor personality model, was a biological imperative I couldn’t deny, even as I experienced the fleeting, drug-induced realization that human connection was just as essential.
It struck me that my first religious experience, though from a smaller dose, had been amplified by nootropics and felt overwhelming. This time, a standard dose propelled me to the same “theological” depths, leaving me wary of future experimentation. The level of anxiety and existential dread was beyond anything I’d felt before. Perhaps having my girlfriend present next time, rather than tripping alone, might help. But integrating these experiences remains challenging, given the complexity of what they reveal and the uncertainty in interpreting them.
It still amazes me how these experiences invariably revolve around the concept of God, each time shifting my personality and beliefs. Though I find religion philosophically useful, my sober view remains rooted in a non-supernatural perspective: religion seems an adaptive evolutionary mechanism at the group level, explaining why even secular societies retain a religious impulse. Yet each time I enter that psychedelic space, I’m confronted by a felt conviction that says, “No. You’re wrong. You’re missing something” Despite all my sober knowledge, I become overwhelmed by the sense of something more—something metaphysical. As with my first experience, it made my ordinary rationalizations seem naïve, as if I were encountering a profound ontological déjà vu. I sensed an “actual truth” hidden behind my normal personality and culture, accessible only through this altered state.
I kept encountering the idea of a “center” that holds meaning together, yet I never examined it in depth. One way to picture this is a city center, surrounded by a wall, with everything else—the periphery—lying outside. The city center stands for stability, routine, and familiarity. Inside the wall, people know where they belong, and life has a clear structure. Beyond that wall, the periphery stretches out as a place that may reveal hidden truths or new possibilities, but it also carries fewer safety nets. In the movie, Earth represents this city center—our home—while outer space stands for the periphery. The main character finds herself on the boundary between these two realms. She once lived in the safety of Earth, grounded by her role as a mother, but the death of her daughter disrupts that feeling of belonging. Earth, which used to be her refuge, no longer feels like home. This loss pushes her toward the outer reaches, making the call of space stronger than it would have been otherwise.
A key scene is the missile strike on an abandoned satellite, which underscores the split between the stability of the center and the uncertainty of the outside. On one hand, the periphery can show us wonders we cannot see from the center. There is a sense of expansion and fresh perspective. On the other hand, once you leave the center behind, there is no guarantee of safety. The movie starts by emphasizing what makes space fascinating, then shifts to show how dangerous it can be when you have no firm ground to return to. In my own life, I sense that when I’m sober, I dwell in the center, surrounded by my usual sense of meaning and day-to-day habits. By contrast, God or Truth seems to exist somewhere in the periphery, reached only by stepping beyond my normal boundaries. Yet there is a deep fear that if I go too far, I might lose all connection to what keeps me anchored. In that moment, I recall feeling like I could be launched into a huge emptiness, with no way back. It was as if everything I knew might slip away, leaving me with no sense of home or direction.
This possibility reminds me of the Icarus myth, where flying too close to the sun leads to a sudden fall. If you drift into the outer regions without a clear link to your center, you risk disappearing into that blank space. That fear remains vivid in my mind. I still remember the wave of dread about becoming lost in the void, about having nowhere to stand. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about symbolism, but I was experiencing it directly. Space and emptiness stood for a form of nihilism, where familiar points of reference no longer exist. This taps into our most basic fears—fears about losing the place we call home, the beliefs that give us order, and the comfort of knowing who we are. Once that center is gone, a sudden panic sets in, driven by the sense that we have no ground beneath us.
In many hero narratives, there is a rebirth moment. In this particular movie, rebirth is portrayed as explicitly as possible when the protagonist folds herself into a fetal position, as if ready to be born again. The curved spine, bowed head, and limbs drawn in serve as a natural way to protect one’s brain and vital organs in the face of extreme threat, whether physical or psychological. This position reinforces the symbolism of life and death as intertwined aspects of a continuous process.
There is also a powerful grief theme in the movie, as the protagonist endures the extreme trauma of losing her daughter. That sort of loss can annihilate a person’s sense of meaning. Yet paradoxically, the protagonist must learn to let go—even when there is seemingly nothing left to hold onto. Grief decimates the old center, leaving her stranded in a kind of nihilistic periphery, yet she clings to what is already gone. Only by releasing her hold, by “embracing the void,” can she rediscover meaning and return to a new center. Sometimes paths to escape exist even when we are convinced they do not; we just fail or refuse to see them. If we are willing to let go, homecoming is still possible. This is vividly illustrated in a scene where she is stuck in a piece of equipment, drifting through space. Had she refused to let go, she would have been lost forever. Yet letting go seems almost suicidal—a deliberate leap into the void. This motif recurs throughout the film, and in nearly every instance, she needs encouragement from her colleague, Matt Kowalsky, who acts as the sage guiding her from the void back home, from the periphery to the center, fostering that crucial rebirth.
Returning to the white rabbit, the feeling I get—and have often felt in my religious journey—goes beyond a hint of hidden reality. It carries a mood of secrecy or conspiracy, a sense of an esoteric call. The white rabbit, as I experience it, is part of a broader archetype that resonates with the “call to adventure” found in myths: stepping away from one’s ordinary world. However, it transcends a mere journey into some fantastical realm. It suggests a deeper phenomenological reality, an ever-present feeling that persistently calls to those who are receptive to it. It gives the impression of a secret hidden in plain sight, much as The Matrix portrays a hidden simulation. In my case, that “matrix” is the ordinary, materialistic world, and chasing the white rabbit is a search for divinity behind the profane. I do not feel as though I’m joining a group; rather, that group has always been calling me, beyond time and space. What allows me to hear that call is my longing to seek truth. Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, noted that humans are often their own architects of deception; to encounter truth, we must be open and relentless in our pursuit. The white rabbit captures this perfectly—you must chase it willingly, no matter where it leads. In Lewis Carroll’s original story, that chase leads to a world of fantasy and the irrational, a kind of peripheral zone beyond ordinary reason. In my own experience, chasing the white rabbit makes me feel as if I’m rediscovering a lost secret, stepping off the familiar road in search of something deeper.
Previous: Volume 2 Chapter 4: Despair