Retro: Echoes from the Andes; Out of Body, Out of mind =1979?

 Title: Echoes from the Andes: Out of Body, Out of Mind

It was high up in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador, in a small village called Esperanza, that I experienced what I now know were two profound out-of-body experiences—both triggered by the ingestion of what my travel companions called the "King Mushroom." It was large, almost the size of a saucer, thick and fleshy, found growing proudly out of a cow dung hill. I had given the two smaller mushrooms from the same cluster to an Argentinian man named Rayo and his Brazilian wife, while I took the largest for myself.

They warned me not to eat the whole thing. But warnings were never my strong suit.

We had taken shelter in the ruins of an old horse corral, and soon after ingesting the mushroom, I sat down at the edge of the wooden floor with my sketchbook. Rayo began tooling my leather cowboy hat with a small hammer and chisel, while his wife played my wooden flute. The rhythm between the metal tapping and the flute’s song wove a strange, melodic spell—something ancient in the air, the sound of the Andes themselves.

I stared into the white void of my sketchbook until long, wormlike lines began crawling across the pages. Looking up at the sky, the clouds above me became cotton mountains suspended in a cobalt sea. And then—I was no longer in my body. I was above it, looking down.

There I sat: a man in a dark blue sweater, brown corduroys, hiking boots, my white towel slung over my shoulder, sketchbook open on my lap. It was a surreal, sacred moment—disorienting yet oddly peaceful. I returned to my body with a jolt and looked up. Rayo had stopped working. He nodded at me with a knowing smile. His wife asked, "Are you okay, Senor?" I nodded.

The second experience came that same night. After Rayo escorted me back to my lodging—an old stable where my tent was pitched—I met a fellow traveler, Brian from Canada, who I had last seen in Colombia. We sat in my tent sharing a joint of Colombian Gold. After a few puffs, the world began to shift again.

Colors turned serpentine. Red and blue snakes danced across my tent’s fabric. I lay back, my head spinning. Then, like before, I was no longer in my body. I stood up outside, clinging to my tent rope, when the spinning turned into a howling vortex of sound and movement. Then—silence. Stillness.

I hovered forty feet in the air, looking down at myself. I saw my ridiculous cowboy hat, my towel, my clothes. Then Brian’s voice called out—sharp, real, grounding. It yanked me back. My hand touched the grass and bounced me upright.

But nature had other plans. My stomach revolted, and I stumbled into the corn patch to relieve myself between two baby corn rows. As if on cue, the sky opened briefly and it rained, washing away my discomfort, baptizing me anew.

I stripped to my underwear, hung my clothes to dry, and crept back into my tent. Birds chattered, pigs grunted, dogs barked, and finally, the human world stirred. I lay listening, soaked in awe.

What did I take from this? I now know—deep in my bones, not because scriptures or sages said so, but because I have lived it—that I am not this body, nor am I this mind. I am that which observes. I am the one who floats, the one who returns.

These experiences—real or hallucinatory—became my teachers. My breath was my anchor. My friend’s voice was my lifeline. And my surrender to the experience revealed a simple truth: Consciousness is not bound by skin or skull.

It took a mushroom, a mountain, and a moment of madness to remember what wise men have always known.