The scene became theatrical, and he, an actor, improvised his tragedy and held his immense audience entranced. Suddenly a look of suspicion came over every face “they knew my secret, and one maddening chorus broke from the whole there, ‘Hashish! Hashish! he has eaten Hashish!’ I crept from the stage in unutterable shame. I crouched in concealment : looked at my garments and beheld them foul and ragged as a beggar’s : from head to foot I was the incarnation of squalidity. Children pointed at me; loungers stood and searched me with inquisitive scorn : the multitude of man and beast all eyed me : the very stones in the street mocked me with a human raillery, as I cowered in my besmeared rags.”
Imagines someone calls him. Hears music of the sweetest and sublimest melody and harmony, sees venerable bards with their harps, who play as it were the music of heaven. A single tone seemed like the most divine harmony. Imagines he hears music : shuts his eyes, and is lost in the most delicious thoughts and dreams. Hears numberless bells ringing most sweetly. For fully two weeks after, when sitting in his office, he would hear most magnificent harmony, as if some master-hand were playing an organ, and using only the softer stops. There was this peculiarity about the hearing of the the music, one must be in a state of half-reverie, then the divine strains, soft and marvelously sweet, followed one another in a smoother legato than any human fingering ever accomplished. If one roused the attention and strained the ear, to be sure of catching every chord, silence came at once.
Heard the noise of colours, green, red, blue and yellow sounds coming to him in perfectly distinct waves.
After such experience of ecstasy, when emerging from a dense wood, heard a hissing whisper, “Kill thyself!Kill thyself!”and unseen tongues repeated it on all sides, and in the air above me, “The Most High commands thee to kill thyself.” But an invisible hand struck at the knife which he was aiming at his throat, and sent it spinning into the bushes.
Physical sensations of exquisite lightness and airlines, and mentally of a wonderfully keen perception of the ludicrous in simple and familiar objects. Objects by which he was surrounded assumed such strange and whimsical expression, and became so inexpressibly absurd and comical, that he was provoked into a long fit of laughter.
His enjoyment of the visions was complete and absolute, undisturbed by the faintest doubt of their reality; while in some other chamber of his brain, reason sat coolly watching them and heaping the liveliest ridicule on their fantastic features. One set of nerves was thrilled with the bliss of the gods, while another was convulsed with unquenchable laughter at that very bliss. His highest ecstasies could not bear down and silence the weight of his ridicule, which in turn was powerless to prevent him from running into other and more grotesque absurdities.
He laughed till his eyes overflowed profusely, every drop that fell became immediately a large loaf of bread and tumbled upon the shop-board of a baker: the more he laughed, the faster the loaves fell, till such a pile was raised about the baker that he could hardly see the top of his head. His throat was as hard as brass : his tongue a bar of rusty iron. Though he seized a pitcher of water and drank long and deeply, his palate and throat gave no intelligence as to his having drunk at all He tore open his vest and tried to count the pulsations of his heart, but there were two hearts, one beating at the rate of a thousand beats a minute, the other with slow dull motion. His throat was filled with blood and blood was pouring from his ears. (On recovering, after several days, there was no taste in what he ate, no refreshment in what he drank, and it required a painful effort to comprehend what was said to him or to return a coherent answer.)
“The unsteadiness of gait of one who tries to keep down : for I felt as if there were springs in my knees and was reminded of the man with the mechanical leg that walked away with him.” “There were present real objects, as well as imaginary ones; but at times I doubted which was which, and floated in uncertainty.”
A weakness of the whole body came on, his legs would not support him: his arms became rigid, he entirely lost his sensations becoming cataleptic: anesthesia again extended over his body and now was added and automation-like and rapid movement of the hands, one hand placed on the breast was rubbed on the back with the palm of the other. By turns the right arms or leg, or the right half of the face, and then all these parts together would seem petrified, so that he could not move them, and would then relax. Suddenly the mass of his brain, all except a small portion, seemed changed to marble; (his right eye, for a long time, retained the sensation of marbly hardness).
Was a prey to extreme loquacity and mobility of ideas: and feared for the fate of his companions, for whom he feared the dose had been excessive and might prove poisonous.
Seized with gesticulary convulsions in arms and legs, and his symptoms assumed the appearance of those which characterize hydrophobia:-outbreaks of fear at the sight of bright objects, at any little breath of air, or at the approach of any one. He asked for water, but only to thrust it away without drinking, unable with the greatest effort to swallow a single draught. A sensation that tongue and throat were covered with a dry, soft body.
An urgent desire to be held, guided, taken care of, lest he should get our of bed to commit some foolish act.
Hands carried automatically to his head and held there, as though there were a difficulty in detaching them.
Cramp in calves which made movements impossible, or caused them to be distended, or take a sudden jump.
Curious, alarming thrills. Went upstairs, seemed not to touch the steps: “I trod the air as a swimmer treads water: my feet came bear to steps but did not strike them.”
“Thought of catalepsy-I must keep my soul in my body by force of will, or perhaps it would never return, I felt it was trying towing itself away. A feeling of loneliness overcame me. I hurled my body through a seemingly impenetrable invisible barrier. Pushing my way through a resistant atmosphere-an the real fluid it seemed to be, not as dense as water nor rare as air, yet it resisted. The two parts of my being were acting separately, my will or spiritual existence was separate from my bodily existence and spurring existence was separate from any bodily existence and spurring it onward, pushing it forward, using it as an artificer uses a tool: onward, it forced my body, seeming to exult in its supremacy.
All was unreal; I myself was unreal; even my voice did not seem my own.
Being persuaded, I ate a piece of meat: to do so I had to recall the various processes and modus operandi of “:feeding”. “First, :I reasoned, “they put the substance in the mouth, and by moving the under jaw down and up and mixing the saliva with it my motion of the tongue, they masticate it.” This was easily accomplished. The spittle seemed to have legs and arms, i could feel it scrambling through the meat, but when it was thoroughly masticated, I could not remember, or rather date back to the time I put the meat in my mouth. Chewing seemed to have been my regular business for ages. It was time to swallow, but to get command of the muscles of my throat wholly baffled all my endeavors.
“If the disembodied over return to hover over the hearthstone which once had a seat for them, they look upon their friends as I then looked on mine. A nearness of place with an infinite distance of state_ an isolation none the less perfect for seeming companionship.”
“A fitful wind had been sighing down the chimney, it grew into the steady hum of a vast wheel in accelerating motion its monotonous din was changed for the reverberating peal of a grand cathedral organ. The ebb and flow of its in conceivable solemn tone filled me with grief that was more than human.”
“At last I was in the street. Beyond me the view stretched endlessly away-an unconverging vista whose nearest lamps seemed separated from me by leagues. A soul setting out for his fight beyond the farthest visible star, could not be more over whelmed with his newly acquired conception of the sublimity of distance than I was I began my infinite journey. I dwelt in a marvellous inner world: existed by turns in different places and various stages of being. Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons of Venice: now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of the coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle. Now in primeval silence of some unexplored tropical forest I spread my feathery leaves, a giant fern, and swayed and nodded in the spice-gales over a river whose waves sent up clouds of music and perfume. My soul changed to a vegetable essence, thrilled with a strange and unimagined ecstasy.”
“My voice seemed to reverberate like thunder from every recess of the building. I was terrified at the noise I had made. (I learned in after days that this impression is only one of the many due to the intense sensibility of the sensorium as produced by Hashish.)”
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