Elijah Hein

Elijah Hein lives in southern Vermont and works at an organic vegetable farm.

The Dolphins of Perception

I have many thoughts and feelings around consciousness and altered states—so many that I don’t even know where to start. I suppose my apartment in downtown Los Angeles in the spring of 2015 is as good a place as any…

Me and my best friend at the time, Tucker, were experimenting with psychedelics. On this occasion, we had taken Ketamine. We were listening to a record—one of my favorites—Panda Bear’s, Bros. It’s a sonic masterpiece. With long tracks, steady beats, and lyrics that repeat and drone and chant, it makes me feel ecstatic and filled with sorrow at the same time. Anyway, we were sitting in my living room listening to this record, not speaking a word to each other. It could have been five minutes, or it could’ve been forty-five minutes before we said anything out loud. I remember laughing and saying something like, “Man, I’m looking at the ocean, and I’m watching all these—”  and Tucker interrupts me and says, “Dolphins! Dolphins jumping out of the water. All these pods of dolphins flying out of the water!” He was right. That’s exactly what I was seeing. We hadn’t been talking about dolphins that day. I am not someone who spends a lot of time thinking about dolphins. There was nothing in the music that was suggestive of dolphins. Yet, sitting together in the dark in our altered states, letting our minds wander, guided by the meditative rhythms coming from the record player, our consciousness connected. We shared an identical vision at the same exact time.

How can this be? Yes, drugs can make people say and do silly things, and coincidences happen all the time. But that’s reductive thinking and does nothing to encourage a dialogue about the significant idea at the core of it all. What I came away knowing [feeling] was this: everyone has access to a deeper level of understanding about themselves, others, nature, and the universe. We’re all made of the same stuff, and therefore we all share the same knowledge that’s been passed along for thousands of years. Unfortunately, to function in these modern times of high anxiety, stress, and distraction, our minds have closed the doors to perception. No one is excluded from the collective consciousness. If you haven’t felt a part of it yet, it’s only because that door hasn’t opened. And that’s okay. It’s there.

You don’t even need drugs to access this place of interconnectedness and understanding—altered states can come from singing, dancing, meditating, breathing—you name it. You only have to let the inhibited side of yourself take a little break so you can make room for wonder and be open to learning things your brain can’t learn when it’s being forced to make linear connections.

The complexity of the universe cannot be understood linearly. There has to be a convergence of science and spirituality. I believe psychiatry and psychology, as scientific disciplines, can be furthered by embracing the concept that the truth of the human mind cannot be understood without accepting that many of our questions can’t be answered with science alone. The new frontier of psychiatry and psychology (which is actually the original frontier)—is going to be the integration of therapeutic psychedelics in the treatment of mental illness. Considering we have the ability to be one click away from someone else thousands of miles away at any given moment, there is a deficit of interconnectedness and community in our modern lives. There is a great irony in that. I think at the heart of the epidemic of unhappiness is our deep, unconscious isolation. I believe work in altered states has the potential to heal much of what ails our culture. We’ve rejected spirituality and closed the door to our ancient connection with the universe. We’ve been asking the wrong questions. Once the door is open, the door stays open.

Rumspringa Existential Crises Nos. 1-3

Seconds after full dark, a gas lamp is lit in the upstairs window of a modest two-story home. It’s golden-yellow glow reveals a yard with a neat row of raised garden beds, a small pasture, and a barn flanked by three horse-drawn buggies. Besides the intermittent sounds of dogs barking, horses snorting, and insects trilling, the night is quiet. In a district with few English homes, the unchallenged lamplight shines like a beacon. Levi has been waiting for the signal from a cornfield across the lane. Tonight, the light marks the beginning of Rumspringa.

He reaches for his solar-powered flashlight, points it at the house, and flashes it three times. Soon, a girl dressed in plain clothes and a black bonnet appears at the window and waves him inside. He takes a deep breath, straightens his straw hat, and walks toward the house on unsteady legs. Upstairs in the small bedroom, three girls around his age pause their chatting and giggling to welcome him. He had known the girls his entire life. Like most highly religious settlements, the Amish folks of Bird-In-Hand, Pennsylvania, are a close-knit community. Still, he had never been alone in a bedroom full of women—and certainly not after dark. The effects were immediate. Within moments, he was wondering what he should do with his hands, whether he should sit or stand, and if he had a weird laugh. Rumspringa existential crisis number 1: am I cool?

Being cool is a concern for most teens. While secular kids imagine hell is a world where they’re not cool, Levi was raised to believe pride, vanity, and individualism would land him in actual hell. If anyone should comment on his lack of coolness, he felt he had a valid explanation. Right as he managed to calm his thoughts, a realization sent him spiraling again: worrying about being cool is a sin. Thirty minutes into his rite of passage, he had failed the test. “Maybe self-discovery isn’t for me,” he thought. Then, as if by divine intervention, a caravan of trucks carrying groups of rambunctious Amish boys pulled into the driveway. The girls let out a collective squeal at the sound of its arrival. They pick up their satchels, take quick turns in front of the mirror, and tiptoe down the stairs. Levi tries to get up from the bench, but his whole body feels like cold cornmeal mush. He plops back down and prays they leave without him. His prayers were interrupted by Clara’s voice­—“Levi!” she yells in a whisper, “Are you coming? We’re all waiting for you! It’s cruisin’ and boozin’ time!” He sighs and walks down the stairs. God must have already made up his mind about poor Levi Miller.

Squinting through blinding headlights, he spots Clara climbing into a beat-up pickup truck and he jumps in after her. He notices that she’s taken off her bonnet to let down her hair. He marvels at her long raven tresses which, according to custom, have not been cut since birth. He feels compelled to reach out and touch her hair, but he sits on his hands instead. The procession of secondhand vehicles roars and moans down familiar country roads, but he was heading in a direction he’d never gone before. He looks back at his quaint little town, growing dimmer in the distance like a lamp low on kerosene. Feeling more resigned than excited, he turns to face forward again.

The boys are wearing English clothes: jeans, t-shirts, and Nikes. One sports long hair and tattoos, the other a buzz-cut and pierced ears. They look to be about 18 or 19. The boy in the passenger seat slides a disc into the CD player, presses play, and turns the volume up to maximum. Levi stifles a scream when the music starts—he’s never heard anything so loud. The sounds of blaring electric guitars, crashing drums, and thumping bass envelop him, and he vibrates inside and out. Feeling queasy from sensory overload, he searches for something to focus on. He fixes his gaze on the headlights piercing the darkness ahead and sits frozen like a rabbit.

Sensing the panic of his young passenger, the buzz-cut boy starts to make conversation. His new friend shouts at the top of his lungs over the music, but even so, Levi can barely make out what he is saying. “Wie geht’s, Bruder? Redd up, we’re going to a Hoedown! You’ll meet lots of cool peeps. And girls—lots of girls, Bruder! Even English come to our parties. They know we party the hardest. They come for the beer and the women. Our women love to drink, you know.” Levi did not know that. Unsure of what to say, he turns to Clara for help, but she’s lighting a cigarette and texting on a cell phone that’s materialized out of thin air. “Yeah, very cool, Bruder!” he shouts. This seems to be an appropriate response because Buzz-cut reaches into the glove compartment, pulls out a long, hand-rolled cigarette and passes it to him with a huge grin on his face. “Try that, my friend. It’ll get you in the mood. We’ll stop at the convenience store outside town and get some beer. I have extra clothes you can change into when we get there. I’m Sam, by the way.” Sam hands Levi a lighter and searches his CD case for something else to play. Rumspringa existential crisis number 2: what do girls want, and how will I know if I have it?

Levi had never smoked a cigarette. Using tobacco in any form is strictly forbidden. The angel and devil on his shoulders resume their lively debate from the bedroom an hour earlier. Remembering that he was beyond salvation, he put the long cigarette to his lips and lit it up. It smelled like one of mother’s herbal tinctures had gotten sprayed by a skunk. “Clara!” he shouts over the music—“this doesn’t smell like a normal cigarette. What is this?” If she answered, he didn’t hear her. He took a puff and felt a plume of hot, thick smoke filling his pristine lungs. After a few more drags, he started to relax. He was smiling, but he didn’t know why. Taking cues from Clara and Sam, he bops his head to the music. The truck speeds past mesmerizing streaks of neon lights emanating from strip malls, fast-food restaurants, and car dealerships. He takes off his hat, sticks his head out of the window, and breathes in the intoxicating aroma of exhaust and fry oil. With his bowl cut blowing in the wind, he howls at the night. Existential crisis number 3: now what?