Welcome to the Greater Beyond

His world began to dissolve around him as he made the leap from terrestrial mundanity to galactic endlessness. 

His body and mind separated from one another seamlessly as if one was being dragged from the other. Eternity was calling him, but not because it was time for him to die. 

As his soul was lifted from his physical being and rose away from the world he had come to know, he did not consider the fact that he should be afraid. There was no need nor no place for fear where his journey would end. Simple observation and appreciation would bring him to where he needed to be. 

Slowly and quickly, his spirit became unentangled from the strings which held it to the earth. He was simultaneously whisked, teleported, and materialized to a place that was simultaneously outer space and beyond the edges of the universe. His exact location did not matter as much as what he would witness while there. 

In this place he was floating. Not in water, nor air, nor anything: simply in a space where there was nothing but he. Nothing as far as he could see nor infinitely farther even than that. His mind was as empty as his surroundings. For the first time, in this supernatural nothingness, he simply existed. 

But within the void that was his mind, he understood that something or somebody else was on its way. A thing that would explain to him where he was and why he had come. For this reason, in the chaos of emptiness that he inhabited, he continued to feel no fear. 

In the distance, a swirl of color began to come into view. The blackness within which his experience lied began to slowly light up as it spiraled around like a streamer, containing all of the colors that he had ever seen and many more while also remaining a solid. It was simply light in its purest form, untouched by the human eyes which altered it from its true self in the mind of a man. The light was not bright, but remained vibrant with all of the incredible hues that he suddenly felt so happy and grateful to be a witness of. 

Within a period of time that was indistinguishable to him, the colors surrounded him on all sides. Seconds or centuries passed by him meaninglessly, and he gazed around at the swirls of beauty that now shared the space that had so recently left him all alone in the darkness. 

He was watching and beginning to unify with the energy. It was as if some incomprehensibly large painter was taking a paintbrush containing every color on the spectrum and continuously swirling it around him, allowing him to appreciate creation in a form that human beings were intended to be blinded from. His bodiless spirit could not smile or feel, but an unmistakeable warmth spread around him. 

Although he had not directly seen them, he knew that the visitor had come. Without turning his eyes or head, he began to gaze upon the being who lay before him. He was visible, standing far larger than any human ever had or would and looking down towards the only other inhabitant of this infinity, but also shapeless and indistinguishable from the spiraling lights which had kept the mortal man in awe for eternities. Looking upon the being who could be an extraterrestrial or a god, he understood that he was in the presence of an entity far greater than man and far more powerful than the human race could ever become. 

Eons passed once again without any change in this world besides the ever-moving lights that never ceased to present impossible and never-before-seen colors to the human who had been chosen to come to this place. 

When universes had been born and died, the faceless Other began to communicate with him. What he heard were not words; perhaps he was not hearing at all. Whether through the tongue or the mind, however, this god-being spoke to him in languages that he had never heard and also understood to his core. It had no voice and made no sound, but the words came to him anyway. 

You have been brought here for a reason.

I know. 

Welcome to a place where everything resides alongside nothing. To a realm where zero and infinity coexist. A domain of cosmic power so great that even i cannot comprehend its greatness. 

To this he had no response. He simply pondered these words, which he had already known to be true. What lay before him had no equal, not only because of its grandiosity, but also because it was the end of the multiverse and everything which lay within it. 

What you see and what you hear represent divinity in its truest form. your mortal body has not come here with you because your brain and physical frame would implode upon feeling the pure energy that exists here. 

He knew that this was true. He was no longer mortal in this place; no mortal could experience such a thing. 

Everything that exists, everything that could exist, everything that could not exist in the universe, all of it is here. You are surrounded by a void that holds all things. And it is all controlled by me. 

Again he simply continued to gaze. There was nothing more for him to do. 

You are to be given a gift that will allow you to know all things and do all things in the limited physical world in which you reside. You will be the king of all humans and the ambassador on earth to my realm. It will grant you eternal wisdom and infinite ability so that you rule the plane on which earth stands second only to me. 

With this, the figure extended his fully formed and shapeless arms to the man until they were fully outstretched. In his massive hands was a ball of purple light small enough to fit into the grasp of a human being. 

He slowly lifted the object from the creator’s hands and held it before his own eyes. He could feel it being absorbed into his own being. He thought about the fact that he would soon be able to understand that which was beyond human intuition and command the physical world to bend to his will. This made the warmth spread around him once again. He closed his eyes and waited for the object to finish its task. 

Suddenly, he was moving very fast through hyperspace. He was seemingly still traveling through an endless void, but he did so in a transparent tunnel of geometric shapes. Inside this cylinder he moved at the speed of light, and he gazed around at the frame of tunnel. it was made up of the outlines of white diamonds, triangles, squares, and other forms that all somehow fit together perfectly to form a prism that extended to infinity. The god was gone as was the gift that the had given the man,  but he knew that its power had already become one with his spirit. All he could do then was continue observing that which existed infinitely around him on all sides. 

It was difficult for him to think clearly in this place, both because his mind was somewhat in a haze and also because he was distracted by the wonder around him. Closing his eyes, he distantly attempted to contemplate what he was seeing. He had not yet eaten from the tree of knowledge but his curiosity still existed in a very disconnected way. Was he in a black hole? A wormhole? Something far beyond either of those things? 

He reached no conclusions. Continuing to keep his eyes closed, he knew that his journey would answer all questions as it brought him to the farthest reaches of the universe and beyond. Whoever or whatever had blessed him with the extraterrestrial power that would somehow manifest itself when he returned to Earth would surely not leave him in the dark. In time, all things would be explained. 

Opening his eyes once again, his setting had changed once again. He was now floating in space with the stars all around him. He was nowhere near the Earth (as far as he could tell), but was simultaneously no longer in the same location as he had been brought to by the divine being so many eternities ago. He still held no control over his state of movement but remained at peace with his surroundings. All along the path that he had traveled there had been not one encounter with fear. Only tranquility, vitality, and wonder. 

Suddenly the stars began to move towards him. The light which emanated from their surfaces too began to intensify, almost as if they were about to explode in a flash of brilliance. Their motion consistently brought them in his direction for some time (he could not tell how long, and what was time to a man in his position anyway) before seemingly coming to a stop. 

Somehow the stars had moved much closer to him and yet remained in their original spots as if nothing had moved at all. As was the case with their seeming location relative to him, it was impossible to say if the light coming from the stars had also become brighter or had remained in its initial state. Then, after a pause which too occupied an indistinguishable amount of time, the stars began to reverse their track. They slowly faded backwards as their light dimmed as well, regressing away from his vaguely comprehending eyes. None of it made sense, but he still asked no questions. 

Eventually the stars had finished their oscillatory motion and paused once more. After another hiatus in movement they began to move towards him once more. Although he had not tilted his head nor moved his eyes enough to look at his surroundings, he was sure that this was happening on all sides of his physical body. 

Eons passed. His mind was too occupied with focusing on the galactic movements occurring around him to think about where or when he was, and he still subconsciously knew that his cognitive functioning was slowed down too much to truly ask these questions anyway. 

The being with whom he had previously interacted could have been the creator who had, for some reason, brought him to the empyrean. It could have been an extraterrestrial being introducing him to the cosmic wonder that he and the rest of the humans would one day experience. It could have been something else entirely. His travel through a portal could have been his return to the realm of the earth from something more divine. It could have been the astronomical equivalent of a bullet train bringing him to his current location. It could have been something else entirely. None of these thoughts came to him then, however. In that moment he simply existed. 

Suddenly, however, the stars began become more fuzzy. They were not fading into the darkness as they had before, however. Something was changing. As they continued to become more and more vaguely formed, it almost appeared to him that they were melting away into an infinite number of white amorphous blobs occupying the blackness of space. 

Eventually the darkness had swallowed the specks of light that had illuminated his universe, and slowly he faded away with them. 

After spending an indistinguishable amount of time in the void that constituted the frame of the universe, a new setting began to develop around him. It seemed as if he was now seated in a room, one that was incredibly familiar to him in an odd way. As more and more light flooded into his surroundings, he slowly realized where he was. It was the same room from which he had been lifted at the beginning of this long journey through the cosmos. This time, however, his own living room was a bit more surreal. Floating, massless blobs of energy traveled through the three dimensions of the room, crackling with flashing light as they moved at a snail’s pace. They contained all of the colors of the rainbow that he had ever seen, but no longer the supernatural shades that did not seem to be able to exist on the plane of earth. These amoebas of energy, while they did flow forth with hues on both ends of the light spectrum, also took on a faceless, translucent grey appearance that was almost indistinguishable from their surroundings. Once again, he simply sat back and allowed his visual experiences to consume his mind. 

For ages and ages he simply sat. The room remained stagnant and his location in the universe did as well, with only the masses of light remaining in slow yet constant motion. The wonder of his previous experiences had gone, and he was now left with only mundanity on which to keep his focus. Eventually, however, these shapes became more and more transparent until they had faded away in front of his eyes. When this happened he simply waited for something to change once more, but his patience was rewarded by nothing. 

He was still. Perhaps he had returned to the realm of humans without understanding where the transition had truly occurred. His mind was numb and his thoughts stagnant, remaining in a state that equaled that of a medical flatline. His eyes and neck did not move, and he sat in his chair, thoughtless and emotionless. 

Slowly but surely, after ample time had passed, he began to feel cognitively human once more. His encounter with something greater had officially ended. In a moment where he seemed to cross over the bridge from stasis to activity, mental function peacefully returned to his brain. 

He moved his arms and head, looking around. When he realized that he had finally returned to normal once more, he looked down at his watch. Exactly twenty seven minutes had passed since his epic and endless journey had begun. It seemed as if eternities had passed as he travelled through the galaxy and beyond to places unseen by any human, but in reality it had not even been enough time for him to begin feeling hungry. 

After gazing at his timepiece in wonder, his eyes moved to the small glass bowl on the table. In a moment of crushing defeat he remembered why his experience with the divine had occurred in the first place. He had not been chosen. He was not special. He had not found a superhuman who had given him an unearthly gift. He had simply come across a normal human who had delivered him this fantasy at a price. 

He released a groan of anguish in the heat of this realization. He closed his eyes once more and attempted to contemplate the fact that he was, in fact, an average man who had not accomplished or experienced much of anything. 

When his eyes opened once more, they focused in on the small glass bowl that had taken him to that place. There were two courses of action which he could take. He could get up and make his life worth something. Perhaps if he did he would one day have a chance at really meeting the creator. 

Or he could simply take another hit of DMT and return to that place full of cosmic brilliance that had brought him so much happiness and wonder. 

The decision was not hard. 

Without hesitating more than five or so seconds, he brought the bowl once more to his mouth and flicked the lighter on, transporting his soon-to-be-free mind back into hyperspace.