The mystic and the schizophrenic find
themselves in the same ocean, but whereas
the mystic swims, the schizophrenic drowns.
~ R. D. Laing
For my last day in New England, I decided to see God, so I signed up for an hour-long session in a Sensory Deprivation Tank.
The theory is essentially simple: block off your senses as much as possible, and, without the distractions of life to muddle your brain, you will have visions, maybe even see the Creator of the Universe.
Or, you might have hallucinations, lapse into insanity, and hear voices tell you to eat uncooked bacon.
Either way, what fun!
The tank I had booked for this leg of my pilgrimage was in the basement of a house on a small hill. This, in turn, was located in a modest neighborhood full of late-1940s houses. I suspect at least one had been bought from Sears & Roebuck back in the day when many houses were ordered from the catalog and delivered in thousands of pieces via the railroad. Like me, some assembly was required.
I admit it was an odd place to meet the Almighty, but the house was surrounded by scrubby shrubs that looked dry enough to burn. Hope sprang eternal in early, post-war suburbia.
I parked on the street and walked up the driveway to the entrance of a New Age Shop located in what was once the house’s garage. It had the standard candles, incense, crystals, and shop-worn books. New Age music played softly on a tinny little CD player, and a plump Buddha stared down from a shelf. That the shelf was situated above a clothes washer and drier, did nothing to frown-out the enlightened, plastic figure. An attractive young woman entered from a beaded doorway and greeted me. She seemed more fairy than human and stood in stark contrast to the Salem witches I had spied on the day before. As I was early, the fairy asked me to sit in an antique wicker chair. Someone else was already floating, and I had to wait my turn to seek my maker.
I felt as though I were in the dentist’s office waiting to hear the whine of a drill bit attacking a throbbing tooth. I expected to see the current floater, having lost his freaking mind, tear through the basement like an elephant on methamphetamines. Instead, everything was calm, except me.
I had never even heard of sensory deprivation until my shrink suggested it a few months earlier. She described the idea behind the “The Float” as something that might help me, a bit like aquatic shock treatments perhaps. Fascinated, I did a little Google research and made plans to give floatation a whirl in Massachusetts as part of my epic tour of the northeast. Once it was inked into the itinerary and the non-refundable deposit had been made, I asked the shrinkster if she had tried a float herself.
“No way!” Sally-head-gazer exclaimed, nearly doing a spit-take on her tea. Sally then informed me that the whole idea for this as part of my treatment sprang not from some psychology textbook or respected journal article but from the 1980 horror movie Altered States in which Dr. Eddie Jessup (John Hurt) gets strung out and mentally lost via floatation. I think this was also Sally’s way of saying she had a thing for John Hurt (What do women see in him, anyway?)
After hearing Sally’s confession (without absolution from me, I assure you), I of course watched the damned movie. The blood and insanity that the tanks generated in that flick didn't bother me in the least; horror movies rarely do. But as I sat in a garage just a few feet from a sarcophagus with my name on it, visions of John Hurt aka Dr. Jessup, naked and drooling animal blood, danced in my head.
According to Dr. Jessup (whose name is a little too close to the name “Jesus”): “I was in that ultimate moment of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing – simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things is that there is no final truth. Truth is what is transitory. It is human life that is real.”
Curiously one could rewrite Dr. Jessup’s words as: that moment of terror that is the end of life. Given my recent experiences at that time, that wording made more sense. Witnessing a series of deaths only added to my PTSD and depression. Stepping into a float tank wouldn’t make me crazy, but it might make me crazier. Was I really prepared to have hallucination without benefit of drugs?
Schizophrenia? As Jessup/Jesus says, “I’m not even sure it’s a disease.”
From the wicked – I mean wicker chair, I looked about the shop and spied a banner with depictions of the 7 chakras hung by the main entrance with care. At least I now knew which ones were which. I studied it and thought some about my throat and heart charkas, which total strangers had told me were blocked. Was that a real thing? Would this float help? I had no clue.
About then a man passed through the “lobby”. He was tall and sported a wet beard and long, wet hair. He was about half my age, but we shared hair values. His eyes and smile flashed me with contentment. I felt better.
After preparations were complete, the young fairish with new-age eyes invited me into the inner sanctum of the basement. She led me down a dimly lit hallway to the tank, gave me a few instructions, and left me to my own devices.
I removed all my clothes except the swim trunks I was already wearing, took a quick shower, put wax ear plugs in my sound holes, and took a deep breath -- not because I would be diving into the tank, but simply to steady my jitters. Then I eased in through a low hatch and into THE TANK.
The water was about 98 degrees. Body temperature. It felt good, and salty. I pulled the hatch door closed behind me. Total darkness filled the empty spaces. Pitch black. The complete absence of light. I could not see my hand in front of my face. Literally.
I stretched out, and, because of the significant dose of salt, I floated easily. That was the first thing I noticed: floating without effort. The sensation of floating without moving, without kicking a foot or waving a hand was amazing. Freeing. Healing in some way. Because the water temperature so closely matched my own, I really had no sense that the water even existed. In the dark with the sensation of floating on nothing, it felt unique, new, and familiar at the same time. I wondered if this was what it felt like to float in space. Or, more intimately -- to float in the womb. This perhaps was why it felt familiar, natal memories stored deep in the folds of my brain. Familiar. Inner and outer space? Are they one and the same?
Then something miraculous happened: my brain began to shut down. The Float slowed my mind, applied the brakes to my analytical busyness. My mind faded into the darkness, and the concept of “me” and “I” began to evaporate.
For a moment it was bliss.
But then I became aware of my breathing. The tank was obviously very humid, and breathing, particularly with sinuses like mine, was at times frustratingly inadequate. I felt as though I might suffocate. Panic began to rear up. This happened three times, and each time I had to resist the temptation to open the door for fresh air.
Had I wanted I could even have propped the door open a crack with a towel. But I wanted the full experience, so I focused on my breathing as if meditating, and the panic passed (In the future I might try a Breathe Right Strip).
Otherwise the experience was wonderful. I relaxed. I enjoyed the absence of sight and sound and gravity. I lost track of time.
In fact I enjoyed it so much, I became fascinated with what few and miniscule sensations I had, such as the slippery feel of the saltwater on my fingertips, the texture of the wax plugs in my ears. Then, after a while, I began to settle that part of my mind as well and simply opened up to the darkness and silence …
Beautiful clouds of vivid colors drifted above me, one then another passing by like fluffy pieces of a rainbow. Then, slowly, the clouds turned a more natural white and became stationary. A man's hairless head appeared among them in profile, ignoring me perhaps. The face was stoic, held no trace of emotion. Was this God? It seemed implausible, too easy. And even as the question surfaced, I knew it was totally unimportant.
The shaved head faded and a new vision emerged: A man in a fine black suit and a bowler hat stood next to three antique, luxury cars. He looked happy, staring up at the clouds, but then about 15 joyous children on bicycles rode up to the scene and began circling the man and his cars. His expression turned to panic.
And then, the surprise struck. I could see, enlarged in the darkness above my face, my dopamine glands in my own brain. I had a vision of the dying, shriveling matter that once controlled my movements so fluidly and gracefully. It looked like a gray moth or dull butterfly of some sort. The left wing was withered and darker than the rest. In the brain it would be the left wing’s death that would allow the tremors in my right hand.
I stared at this image for what seemed to be, in retrospect, several minutes. Then everything went black, and I fell into a deep, deep meditative state.
Nothing is still Something to the Zen mind. Buddhists call it Mu. After the vision of my butterfly glands, I felt Mu, a level of meditation I had only reached a couple of times before. Time stretched out to blissful infinity. "I" no longer existed. "I" was simply a part of everything else. Energy. Chi. The It.
I sensed my on-going place in the universe, of God – not as imagined on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling or a blank face in the clouds -- as the energy that connects us all.
I shifted to a transcendental space. It had been a great many years since I had last been to this space, and then on fleetingly. This lasted some time, and I was grateful to find it. I drifted in peace. Not asleep. Not awake, either. I floated present in the cosmos.
Then I heard the fairy’s muffled knock on the tank’s hatch door. My time was up.
Reluctantly I opened the door, squinted into the “bright” light of a basement, and re-entered "reality."
Excerpted from Matt’s Misadventures, a book in progress.
Copyright 2015, Matthew C. Wolfe. All rights reserved.