Lew BlinkDec 6, 2019 · 6 min read
A Time Traveling, free-will potential, psychedelic science fiction short story.
Part 1
As their breath returned to a normal post-sexual rhythm, they discovered a desire to talk about important things. Two souls still in the grip of each other, with fingers intertwined and faces full of loving closeness. There was something special in the way the Other felt, when hands caressed and topics became engrossing. They felt a sort of …. satisfying feeling and yet a building at the same time. One lover talks about contentment and the other speaks about a recent transcendent experience.
“..it was the way we all seemed to intuitively understand each other, magical, as if we all became one mind.”
“And you got all of this from ……what was it called….Circling?”
“Absolutely, it was empowering to open up to strangers in that way, and really feel closeness on deep intimate levels.”
“I don’t know……are you sure this is not the beginning of a cult?” asked the one called Charles with a smile.
“No, it was beautiful and this one guy named Trevor, we started talking after.” the younger one watched for jealously in their lover’s face.
“Yeah?” replied the stoic one.
“He is very committed to yoga and meditation and has quite a story to tell.”
“So, a spiritual guy who rants a lot?”
His lover stopped rubbing his leg and recoiled at the judgement. It was a constant barrier between the two, as the Writer was an atheist and his boyfriend dabbled in the spiritual worlds.
“Trevor is a sweet boy, I think you would like him.”
The Writer watches hisboyfriend stretch his tight yoga body, arching his back in a yawn and moving into a sitting position. Charles sat up himself, eye to eye, to hear the all too familiar pitch.
“You should do a story about him?”
“I don’t do spiritually themed interviews.”
The green eyes danced in his vision and the smile worked it’s way into his being. With a sigh, he nodded and relented.
“I’ll meet him for coffee.”
“Tea!” said his betterment driving lover.
Trevor was on time and dressed in simple clothes with a glass water jug sitting next to him on the table. After getting a coffee, Charles finds himself impressed with the pose and intensity of the young man. They settled into a polite banter, but since neither knew where to begin, Trevor simply got to the point.
“I have a story unfolding I would like to tell, and as I understand, you are a storyteller?”
Charles laughed at the linguistic moniker as the modern world requires many talented facets to survive, and the narrow description felt somewhat archetypal. He responded cryptically, very curious what the attractive young man dabbled in.
“Yes, in a way. What is your story about?”
“Time travelling.”
Charles was quiet for a moment, while processing the words and their possible meaning.
“Have you ever heard of Stan Grof?” asked the Time Traveler.
After a shake of the head and a sip of coffee, the story was launched.
“Dr. Grof came out of the Psychedelic research scene of the 1960’s, where he was obsessed with non-ordinary states of consciousness. After many years of working with LSD in both Europe and John Hopkins Research, he found himself having to shift after 1968, when acid became illegal. What does a scientist do, when your area of research has been cancelled for political reasons?.…you improvise!” (*true story)
Trevor took a moment to make sure that Charles hadn’t been lost, but the Writer seemed interested in the train of thought, so he progressed.
“There were many researchers working in consciousness expansion, during that era. John C. Lilly was taking ketamine and regressing to primal states while floating in deprivation tanks, Russell Targ was doing remote-viewing research, Andrija Puharich was using the Amanita Mushroom to open up psychic states and of course America’s C.I.A. had it’s own MK-Ultra project.” (*real people)
Charles nodded familiar with… at least one name on the list and was beginning to grasping the direction of the topic.
“Dr. Grof was mostly interested in healing childhood traumas and digging into our understanding of early psychology with the use of Altered States. Since LSD was out of picture, he began to use shamanic breathwork.”
“Breathwork?”
“Rhythmic breathing to induce an altered state, Grof called it a Holotropic State, which has it’s roots in most of the world’s shamanic traditions. Ecstatic dancing, drumming, and many other techniques are used to induce a trance. I began to learn these techniques myself and have been attempting to push the boundaries of human consciousness.”
“Interesting.” Charles shook his head, being polite but not having any clue where this was going.
Trevor held up his finger as if he was about to get to the point.
“Slightly trained people would use this Holotropic training to journey back into their childhood and remember events and trauma, even as far back as the womb. What fascinated me was those amateurs brought back “real” information from the experience. Kinda like how near-death victims are able to remember details of what is happening around them, despite having no pulse or brain wave movement. One woman using breathwork seemed to remember the noise of construction before her birth, and it was verified by her mother. Other participants opened up past traumas that had been repressed by re-experiencing them from a sort of 3rd person perspective, creating therapeutic results. “
Trevor with his eyes fully engaged seemed to disappear into an idea in his head. Charles watched fascinated by the young man.
“Whatever ….is happening during a breathwork session, it seems to have an ability to bring back real information, to travel through time, and discover something that was previously unknown.”
Charles shook his head in disagreement and interjected.
“Our brain records many things, that might not be consciously remembered, that doesn’t make it time travel.”
“True, but Grof had a very strange breakthrough in the early years of his research. He was taught in school that the human baby brain in development doesn’t have the words, or an ability to discern the details of objects that are foreign and unknown. A young mind does not use their pattern recognition software to an extent that provides specific information, so a memory of the past from the perspective of a baby should be a mass of chaotic forms with no relationship to reality, right?”
“Right!”
“Grof was able to prove that isn’t true. Some kind of precognitive understanding of the world already exists within a baby’s mind, and that re-shifted his focus and understanding of reality as he researched various states of consciousness”
“What?” Charles shifted uncomfortably in his chair, trying to find the narrative.
“Ok, let me spell it out. Based on his research, and his techniques, lots of training and certain additions of my own, I’ve been able to travel into my past and I’ve brought back information from my childhood. All my training is exclusively designed to time travel and I want to prove it, by bringing back something I shouldn’t know…. I need an objective witness”
The coffeehouse was strangely quiet at that moment, and Charles was trying to make sense of the odd conversation. His mind was filling in the blanks with nothing more than an idea of something vague and unusual. Trevor reached across the table with his hand up, offering it up like a sacrifice.
“Let me show you how to time travel!”
End of part 1
For the exciting conclusion…