Bastante Solipsis Marquez sat with Chief Niwot beside a church not far from the creek which came out of the mountains.
"Tell me about the DMT," said Chief Niwot. He packed a bowl of herb.
"My first time smoking DMT I was by the creek with Rasta Daniel, " said Bastante. He lit the bowl.
" I took a big rip as a dreadlock fell down in front of my face. It caught fire, and I witnessed a flame shoot out of my third eye as ego dissolved."
He passed the bowl. "Rasta Daniel said, what's it like? and I said, its beginners mind. Like the book, you know? And He said, what's that? And I pointed to a guy floating down the creek on an inner tube, and I pointed to the inner tube and I said, look. And right as I pointed to the inner tube, it popped."
Chief Niwot raised an eyebrow as he puffed on the bowl.
"what's beginner's mind?" he asked.
Bastante nodded. "Perceivable phenomena, or reality, is perceived by the senses and collated, as it were, by the self-referencing ego. The ego collates and integrates sensory input for assessment and response purposes, arbitrarily inventing an individual 'self'.
He continued: "This is consciousness, or self-consciousness. this is our thinking mind. Far, far deeper within the subconscious lies an awareness that does not think, nor perceive, nor collate nor integrate. This awareness is preconceptual, and may only be described as a wakeful emptiness."
"This empty wakefulness is the nature of all reality: plants, trees, stars, machines, people, mind, wind, and inner tubes. The origin of all phenomena is emptiness, but not just that: the origin of all phenomena is the same emptiness. Deep within the heart of unconscious mind lies a nonlinear zero-point from which all coordinates in space-time are related, readily accessible, and perceived as not-other-than-self."
"We just can't think about it or know it, right?" laughed Chief Niwot.
"Or even talk about it accurately," agreed Bastante. It bummed him out.
"Beginner's mind is the mind which dreams reality," said Chief Niwot, who was no fool.
"Exactly," said Bastante. "Beginner's mind is empty mind, empty of all phenomena or bias and thus nonlocal. Beginner's mind is everywhere at once, because beginner's mind is the cause of the very space-time which maps 'everywhere'.
"So you smoked DMT and merged into union with the dreamer of reality, wherein all perceivable reality was a facet of your consciousness," said Chief Niwot. he was impressed.
'yup," said Bastante. "I popped the inner tube with my mind, because the inner tube existed within my mind, because all reality is mind-made."
"yup," said Chief Niwot.
"yup," said Bastante.
they smoked in silence.
