Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Steven Kotler

Quote by Steven Kotler

Work

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Steven Kotler
Steven Kotler

Steven Kotler, born on May 25, 1967, is an American author known for his works in the fields of personal growth, psychology, and neuroscience. His unique perspective and in-depth research have revealed the limitless potential of human beings to his readers. more

You May Also Like

“There was a feeling of being in the nucleus of the psyche. Awareness of “all and everything” and simultaneously, “This is IT.” The Vedantists say at the highest level of consciousness there is only being (sat), consciousness (chit) and blissful joy (ananda). In my experience there was no self, no body, no time or space, but there was being. There was also consciousness: I could remember everything afterwards. Even though “I” wasn’t there, there was observation and recording going on. And there was certainly bliss, joy, ecstasy unimaginable. I had the sense of being at an exact balancing edge between an internalizing and externalizing movement. I could let go, sinking deep within, falling and opening to a vast inner spaciousness, or I could let the energy come out and express through body movement and voice (RM).”

EcstasyVedantaPsychedelic ExperiencePsychedelicsEgo DeathAltered Consciousness5 Meo Dmt
Book:The Toad and the Jaguar
Create image

“I find myself on my knees, my body is being moved in incredibly smooth, fluid dancing motions, not by me, but by a spiritual Presence within me that feels totally other, unknown, not-me. Yet I don’t feel any fear or resistance, just awe, as I willingly give over my form to be used by what seems to be a deity. I’m feeling my arms moving, and yet I’m not moving them. The presence feels now male, now female, now androgynous, now serpentine. Shiva, Shakti, Kundalini. The awareness emanating form this Shakti-being is all-embracing, all-encompassing of all of me, my body, and the environment. I remember experiencing what it felt like to be the floor that my body was resting on, the land that the house was on, the planet Earth that the land is on, the cosmos that the Earth is in…(RM).”

VedantaPsychedelic ExperiencePsychedelicsEgo DeathAltered Consciousness5 Meo Dmt
Book:The Toad and the Jaguar
Create image

“Multi-colored lines of light formed a kind of dome covered in a faceted geometric network of jewels, the whole dome spinning silently. The jewelled dome seemed to become a kind of lens, through which I could see into other worlds beyond, where the points of light were stars and galaxies. At first there were tiny scintillating sparks of light against a velvety blackness. They merge to become a brilliantly colored, weaving, flowing tapestry of geometric forms, extending infinitely in all directions. Then this kaleidoscopic field of patterns dissolved my body into it, so that I don’t see it anymore – I have become part of it (RM).”

Psychedelic ExperiencePsychedelicsEgo DeathAltered Consciousness5 Meo Dmt
Book:The Toad and the Jaguar
Create image

“The weaving, waving field of geometric shapes and lines folds and falls over me, or I fall into it. I am seeing small spherical globules of white light, like pearls, that are glistening, shining moist, and perfectly aligned and interconnected in complex three-dimensional webs, reminiscent of Buckminster Fuller’s dymaxion structures, yet always changing, unfolding and enfolding. These webs are what constitutes my body, clustering in certain areas to make organs like my eyes. They also constitute all other bodies and forms around me. Each individual is a kind of cluster in this infinite ever-changing molecular web. Each thought or feeling or experience is also a local cluster in this holographic matrix of all possibilities. A sun of pure white light radiates out from the center of the swirling, pearl-studded crystalline grid. It is too intensely bright for me to maintain the focus of attention, so gradually I lose awareness of it and emerge back out of the infinite oneness back into my body-form (RM).”

Psychedelic ExperiencePsychedelicsEgo DeathAltered Consciousness5 Meo Dmt
Book:The Toad and the Jaguar
Create image

“(Male) As my breath went out, I went in. And still I fell. The last vestige of resistance, a mere quiver of anxiety, subsided. I was fearlessly falling into an incredibly spacious, powerfully radiant, ancient but ever-present center, at once still and moving, a Core from which all things were arising, would arise, had arisen. I had let go and I had arrived. I was Home. That which I called “I” hung suspended in a vast, spacious and imperturbable Universe. I felt freed from my usual burden of aches, pains, tensions and fears, unconstricted, deeply and profoundly relaxed, at home in life, in a state of no struggle, deliciously, effortlessly healed.”

Psychedelic ExperiencePsychedelicsEgo DeathAltered Consciousness5 Meo Dmt
Book:The Toad and the Jaguar
Create image

“(Male) I was somehow able to guide my body to a laying position, though I had very little body awareness. A deeper letting go seemed to occur by allowing the body to rest without muscular effort. All body awareness dissolved into awareness of soft, expansive currents of bliss. Even the sense of joy and amazement which this engendered dissolved as identity merged into formless Being. At that edge between Form and Formlessness, I felt the sense of being at a threshold which I had never before crossed. With both the joy and the difficulty of a birth, separate identity was relinquished, and all that remained was boundlessness. The relief and the sense that finally the ancient, primordial Search was over was utterly indescribable. There seemed to be an oscillation between pure undifferentiated Being and Observing Ego, because I had awareness of coming into Form, feeling profound ecstasy, joy, gratitude and love, and then dissolving back into That which from these feelings flowed. I became aware of a sense of arriving, of finally having found what felt like I had been looking for – for eons. I realized that where and who I am is self-evidently beyond life and death. A thought arose of my dying sister-in-law, and relief spread throughout at realizing the fallacy of death. A vague sound was associated with this relief, a wetness reminded me of bodily existence and I realized I was crying.”

DeathEcstasyPsychedelic ExperiencePsychedelicsEgo DeathAltered Consciousness5 Meo Dmt
Book:The Toad and the Jaguar
Create image

“(Female) I experienced what I can only describe as pure awareness, though not self-identified. An awareness that travels in search of more, ever increasing, ever expanding and unattached – free of any limit, binding or density. It was pure awareness moving through space, though not like a dark starry sky, rather like the intervals between everything all combined. The “I” or “me” was gone. It was an experience of no individuality yet I had very definite awareness and full existence. I said “I need help” – expressing a desire for the attention of others to enable me to focus, maneuver and navigate in such an unknown dimension. With the group attention, we journeyed to the “left-overs” of God, as Carlos Castaneda put it, or the outer limits of God. Then jointly we journeyed beyond, co-creating, co-realizing and traveling – exploring out into the very “nothing” beyond the universe, and then into the somethingness of form, like the energy of somethingness at the atomic or molecular level. We began recapitulating the evolution into form, rapidly entering all phases and kingdoms – the elemental, mineral, vegetable, animal…each with a new found awareness, understanding and capability. An experience of “Hey, look what I can do” of grand proportions. Each evolution finding itself, experiencing the opportunity of intention – particularly in the human form, and delighting in it, deliriously and hysterically. It literally cracked me up, through all the episodes of evolution.”

Psychedelic ExperiencePsychedelicsEgo DeathAltered Consciousness5 Meo Dmt
Book:The Toad and the Jaguar
Create image

“(Male) At this point I was in an utterly empty place, where the only remaining thing was light itself. There were no features, not even a sense of energy flux. The place seemed as full as it could be, without containing a single object or pattern. Getting somewhere else, or waiting for a manifestation, simply did not occur to me. The guide later called this space the “plenum void”, a term from mysticism that means the empty space that contains everything, a kind of featureless fullness. The basic nature of the experience was an initiation into the radiant void.”

Psychedelic ExperiencePsychedelicsEgo DeathAltered Consciousness5 Meo DmtPlenum Void
Book:The Toad and the Jaguar
Create image

“(Male) This medicine hurled me deep into the fiery firmament, with instantaneous, absolute death of ego, no-self on the quantum level of consciousness-chaos, harmony and bliss. The deepest fullest release from the chains of illusion. This big bang of God-orgasm, creation overwhelming bliss, no choice but absolute surrender to the primal current. Flooding back to consciousness, still fully aware as the body was permeated and open to the infusion of the ultimate ground of being. Body fully open to assimilate throughout every atom of being blissful non-attached truth of the unlimited eternally fresh, fiery present. Left with a sense of unbounded joy and sensory delight beyond description.”

EcstasyPsychedelic ExperiencePsychedelicsEgo DeathAltered Consciousness5 Meo Dmt
Book:The Toad and the Jaguar
Create image