“Why do we have to go to this?” Erwin asked, glancing worriedly from side to side as they walked into the building where McKenna was to give his talk on ‘The Mind Expanding Potential of Psychedelic Plants’.

  “Because McKenna became a leading voice of the 60’s on Psychedelics. His work influenced the New World,” Ethan replied, “You’re documenting this era. We can’t not go see McKenna. Also, he’s one of the biggest stoners ever, but one of the straightest guys you’ll ever meet. I can’t wait to hear him speak”.

  “But the police will be here,” Erwin replied, continuing with sideways glances. He noticed someone who was for sure an undercover officer. “They’ll take our names”.

  “I doubt it,” Ethan replied. “I think there’s still a grey area regarding the legality of psychedelic plants in 1967”.

  Now, Ethan could have left it there, and perhaps relieve Erwin of some of his fears, but it wasn’t in his teasing nature to let things pass so calmly. “They’ll probably just take our pictures”, he said, knowing full well it would set Erwin’s off again. He knew it when it was coming out of his mouth, but he said it anyway. Ethan was very aware how nervous Erwin was about attending what he considered a subversive event. Erwin made it very clear on the bus ride over, he did not like the idea of going somewhere that provoked authority. His provocative and often unthinking nature was one of the main reasons Ethan had to keep going on quests.

  He said it anyway, and this threw Erwin into a whole new level of anxiety, where he started to unconsciously grab at his hair. “Our pictures! Why would they want to take our pictures”?

  Seeing this, Ethan's brain finally caught up with his mouth, and he suppressed the urge to say, “So they can getcha!” He remembered he could be a dick that way and it wasn’t too New Worldly of him. “It’s okay Erwin,” he said, adopting a calming tone. “There’ll just be a bunch of students here. It’s just something to do over the holidays. There’s nothing to worry about”.

  The talk was held in a small, tiered seating theatre with soft tones and a laid back institutional vibe. There were a few professors wandering around, but as Ethan predicted, mostly students filed in. As no-one seemed to pay particular attention to Erwin, he started to relax a little, but still watched the passing people, and turned around and stared at those he thought had ulterior motives.

  McKenna’s speech was interesting, but he was at the beginning of his journey and yet to reach the remarkable conclusions of his life experience. It was still good. Mostly about how indigenous cultures used psychedelics back in the day to access guidance from a spiritual realm of consciousness. Psychedelics were part of, and influenced their culture. He argued how it was a Mind Expanding potential for people and culture. After that he talked a little about the pharmacology of the plants and how the same chemicals were found in the human brain.

  After his talk, McKenna stayed for questions from the audience. No one even touched on the subject of the speech. They all wanted to know how to avoid a ‘Bad Trip’.

  “Your speech was groovy. But I was wondering if there’s a way to avoid bad trips”? Is what they’d ask him.

  “I don’t know,” McKenna said. “It’s almost like you have to take enough to blast through to the experience. I’d say, take more rather than less. You shouldn’t take so little that you still have a degree of self-control. That’s when you get paranoid; when there's still part of your ego to be afraid and fight the experience. Take enough so you can’t escape it. Don’t fight for control. You took the drug to have a different experience. Step back and become part of it.”

  “I’d add,” McKenna said, “To focus on breathing or try singing when you feel the urge to resist. Oxygenate your brain.

  “Also,” McKenna concluded. “Not everyone should take a psychedelic drug. We all have our issues and you’re going to run into them. Psychedelics tear down the walls of the self. If you’re still building or are already clinging to a sense of self, you should not be taking these plants”.

  Throughout the entire talk and follow up, Erwin sat head down documenting everything in a notebook, probably word for word.

  “If you don’t mind, I would like to comment,” Ethan said from out of the blue. McKenna nodded willing consent. “The breathing part is very important. The extra oxygen is required to meet the potential of the experience, which is to connect to the Universal Frequency. The oncoming waves you feel can be startling at first, but they’re just waves. They come and splash upon the shore, but they always recede. They come in, sometimes crash down, but always go back again. You calm the waves with breathing, and you’ll notice the shore you’re on is very bright. Darkness will not be part of your experience. The Psychedelic not only brings you to an entire new ocean, but also the clarity to observe it. You’re part of it, and if you let yourself go, you become one with it, and wave after wave flows through you and out into the Universe and you are part of it all. The ocean is the Universal Frequency. All that is known. If you look, you will find the understanding you seek”.

  No-one, even McKenna said anything after Ethan’s comments. It was a perspective foreign to everyone, and someone, especially someone like McKenna would take the time to conceptualize it before speaking. He more or less just stared at Ethan for a while, and then said, “Well this is a provocative message. Perhaps we should end on that and go home and think about it. Goodnight, and thanks for coming”.

  As the people were leaving, McKenna continued to stare at Ethan, which Ethan expected and in spite of Erwin plucking at his sleeve to leave, stayed seated and waited. Once most of the audience were on their way, McKenna came down from the stage and made his way to where Ethan and Erwin were seated. Ethan and Erwin rose to meet him.

  “Universal Frequency”? He asked.

  “Yeah, well, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that,” Ethan replied. “I don’t think humanity discovered it until after you were dead.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  McKenna stared at Ethan for another moment. This time more intently. Where does one put that?

  “So, you’re from the future?” he says.

  “That’s right,” Ethan replied, with an assuredness that if nothing else, was compelling.

  “Alright,” McKenna agreed after another few seconds thought. When it came to other-worldliness, McKenna was pretty much your Huckleberry. He’d follow you down whatever wormhole you wanted to go in.

  “Let’s go get stoned,” he said.

  They ended up at a big two-story house by the University. The type of house students rent for the school year, which was the case with this one. It was an older house, with an abundance of character. There was a beautiful old mantled fireplace which now glowed from Christmas lights drawing attention to a Buddhist shrine. The living room was full of bean bags, old couches, and a large Indian rug covering most of the hardwood floor. In spite of the bohemian decor, the old house added an inviting warmth.

  Students and the same profs who attended McKenna’s talk were grouped throughout the entire first floor. A few were playing the latest rock and roll albums on a tinny portable stereo in the dining room. Others were sitting around in conversation, while others milled around talking or listening to conversations. It was all very laid-back. Ethan, Erwin, and Terence, sat at the kitchen table, which seemed to be a familiar place for McKenna.

  Erwin, out of his comfort zone for hours now, was at the height of anxiety. First, openly attending a subversive talk, and now finding himself in what he sure was an opium den. Something illegal for sure. He could smell it in the air. Thoughts filled his mind of all the drug raids in his newspaper clippings. Images of misguided youth being hauled off to jail, filled his mind.

  Fortunately, a young woman brought the group tea, and that and sitting at the kitchen table brought him a degree of comfort because that was what he and Mother used to do.

  “Oh, thank-you,” Erwin said. “A tea would be lovely”.

  “Now, about this Universal Frequency,” Terence asked.

  “Well,” Ethan replied. “In the future, we recognize we live in two universes. One is the Physical World we’re all familiar with; the other is the Abstract World of our thoughts and ideas. They are a duality and share the same history. When we take two ores and create an alloy, this is an abstract discovery utilizing the potentials of the natural world and civilization advances.

  “All these Tools, mathematics, everything, live in the Abstract World waiting for us. Some of them like math, we have discovered, recognized their utility, and through their adoption, advanced Civilization. All thoughts, ideas and constructs; conceptual stuff travelling with us through space and time, lives in our Abstract World and becomes part of us when we adopt it. With these tools, we’re creating momentum in our species to take us to the Enlightenment; the Universal Frequency. It’s the same thing as the Universal Wavefunction in physics, which is static at any given moment. The Universal Frequency is the wavefunction of the Universal Wavefunction. It’s everything that lives in the Abstract Universe and it flows freely through us if we open ourselves to it”.

  “Wow,” Erwin said. He didn’t look as anxious as a few minutes ago. He appeared calm, but caught up in his thoughts. You couldn’t tell if he was responding to what Ethan said, or just something going on in his own mind.

  “So we’re entering a completely different world when we take Psychedelics?”

  “Yeah. We’re surrendering ourselves to the Abstract World where the Universal Frequency lives. Because the Universal Frequency contains everything, there are greater elements of God in it. Something unknown possessing an understanding much greater than our own, put it there. Walking into it either through meditation or psychedelics should be regarded as a spiritual experience. In the future our species has evolved into a permanent state with the Universal Frequency through our Collective Consciousness. Understanding this transition should be the goal of your trip”.

  “So when do we fully inhabit this place?” Terence asked.

  “We do already. It’s your abstract mind. It’s where you go when you daydream. Here in the 1960’s, humans have yet to recognize its value and utilize it, but you are becoming aware of it and it is the force behind the Counter Culture. Psychedelics can help some people find and understand the Enlightened Abstract Universe, but they are not required to find Enlightenment. Many glimpse the promised land through religion, meditation, and the majority connected as part of the Collective Consciousness around 2030. Aligning ourselves with the Collective Consciousness is what causes the evolutionary transcendence of our species.

  “It’s not a scary evolution,” Ethan continued. As a matter of fact, we’ve already done it, but it’s such a part of us we take our state of abstraction for granted. No one’s ever wondered where you go when you daydream. It’s another place, and foreign to us. We often fear it although it’s where Heaven dwells. It’s too foreign from the ground we walk on, and there’s that whole question of whether you’re going to get laid in heaven, floating around up there in the clouds. They fear they’ll have to give up their bodies, and they won’t be doing any fun stuff. The thing is, we have both right now. at change? You never lose what you already have.

  “The thing to do here is enlarge your perception of yourself. You are not of the kind making your way through this one life. You are of a kind traversing the space/time continuum throughout eternity. When you join as a species and move forward as one, you keep your personal spaceship, but you’re flying through space and time as a fleet. You’re stronger. More secure. A Collective Presence ensures there’s plenty of space and time on the road ahead. Each one of us is a star in the Abstract Universe and together we light the way. There’s more God in this dimension too. You become one with the Universal Frequency and all those God Tools are with you. It’s quite a trip”.

  “Far out,” McKenna said. “What do you do with all this expansiveness”?

  “Whatever you want. If you want to trip; you’re exploring yourself in relation to all that there is. It’s like being in your own spaceship flying from one curiosity to the other. You’re tripping the Universal Frequency and riding the Wave of Collective Consciousness. You’re part of it all, but you’re also your physical presence. If you want to hang with friends, you can do that too. When you live in the Collective Consciousness, you’re not reading anyone's mind, or anything like that. You sense their energy, and like attracts like so you develop some very strong relationships on earth”.

  “Have you looked at this table,” Erwin said, somewhat out of the blue. It was a reddy-orange Formica table and filled with white-yellow stars. When you looked closer, yellow glitter was embedded, dampening the deepness of the red and creating depth perception.

  “I feel I could walk right into this table,” he said.

  Ethan and Terence turned their focus to Erwin. With his thick spectacles, he was down, eye level to the table, tilting his head back and forth from one angle to another. You’d think he had found an entire universe. Terence got up and led him to a Mandala wall hanging.

  “Look at that,” he said, sitting Erwin down in front of the wall hanging.

  “Whoa!” was all Erwin said.