A Gigantic Mechanical Entity: The Darkest Ride of My Life

Rachael Howard, UK

“This ayahuasca experience was my most profound plant medicine experience to date, and I’m finally ready to talk about it. I have found that the most challenging experiences are often the most healing and rewarding in the end, as the darkness/shadow side is our greatest teacher. But, it can take some time (in my case 1.5 years) to fully integrate and understand what everything meant.

In April 2017, I went on one of the darkest rides of my life with ayahuasca. I sat in ceremony with a heavy and broken heart, with the man who broke it physically present. That didn’t feel great at the time, but it took me on the deepest healing journey of my life. This really was an ineffable experience, as I’m sure those who have touched the void will understand. I will do my best to describe it, so here goes:

Once fully immersed in the medicine, I was taken at lightning speed straight to the dawn of all creation; beamed directly into the loving light of God. I was having an experience of absolute religious ecstasy. Nothing in my life had even come close to making me feel this way. In my bliss, I was able to stand, to dance, to worship all that is. The music being played in ceremony was moving through me and seemed angelic in nature. The fractal patterns swimming around me were incredibly beautiful and healing too. I was in heaven. And I knew right then, with every fibre of my being, that I was the creator.

It wasn’t long before everything changed. A particular song come on, one that I had previously loved. Yet somehow now, it sounded dark and menacing. Suddenly, as quickly as a high speed train passes you by, all of the beautiful geometric fractal patterns began to digitalise and break apart. The visions turned from a rainbow of indescribable beauty into patterns with hard, jagged edges that had a sinister look about them.

As quickly as the images turned from beauty into horror, I seemed to lose the use of my legs, and I fell down onto my floor-bed face first and did not get up again for the remainder of the night. I was witnessing the entire universe folding in on itself, everything was being dismantled and destroyed around me until there was nothing left. Whilst this was happening, I was also simultaneously being transported at lightning speed through a dark womb like tunnel until I was blasted out the other side into what I could only describe at the time as a hellish realm.

Geometry became hellish, chaotic and nauseating

I opened my eyes to try and escape this realm, but my vision was met with this strange, dark, jagged, grotesque, never-ending geometry. These patterns were translucent, layered on top of each other, chaotic and nauseating. The shapes were flying towards me at such speed that it was making me incredibly travel sick, forcing me to close my eyes again and face this hellish realm.  

Somehow I knew that the intelligence in mother ayahuasca was taking me deeper than ever before, and that I had to face this thing. In my rational state, I know now that I was not in any real danger. But at the time I was so far gone that my only thoughts were of absolute terror.

Suddenly, I was in pitch blackness. This was a void, and I was being taken to the pits of hell. I now had a feeling of mental paralysis, and my thoughts just wouldn’t form properly. It was as though my brain had been shut down and only a mere fraction of my consciousness was left. There was no rational aspect of my mind left. I had no recollection of ever having been human, or of anything that existed.

Enter the gigantic mechanical entity

Out of the blackness of this infinite void came a gigantic mechanical entity, and it was sinister and foreboding. I was trapped in the void with this cold, steel, faceless thing, and we were floating in the nothing. Its outer shell was made up of the same dark geometric patterns I had seen flying at me before, but they were now static and had come together to form this strange looking machine.

To the left side of the machine was a large black tube that was spitting oil from its opening, in my direction. Behind the machine entity’s shell I could see a translucent egg-shaped vessel that was bubbling over with some unknown substance. I would later learn what this substance was. To the right of this vessel and on the outside of the patterned shell was a gigantic metal cog. 

What was more significant than the structure was the energetic, invisible, yet very real language that I was somehow perceiving without physically seeing or hearing it. The machine was turning its cog closed, which created a loud, repetitive clunking sound; this in turn generated an energy that I was interpreting. This entity was manufacturing the most demonic, horrific, sinister, terrifying, desolate, sickening things that it could find to project my way.  

With every turn of the cog, a fresh new hell penetrated me energetically. This was absolute and total terror. I was told energetically that the substance spilling out of the inner vessel (but being kept locked in by the machine) was all of the pain and horror in the entire universe. This machine entity was tormenting me, laughing at me as it controlled all of the pain in the universe… laughing at me as it forced me to feel all of that pain. And that pain swallowed me whole.

My heart had been disconnected from the start

So what happened? I now know that ayahuasca was removing my rational mind and getting straight to the core of my being. She was speaking to my soul, and the lessons were harsh, but necessary. I was given only what I was able to handle, however challenging it was at the time.

 My heart had been disconnected upon entering this experience due to the heartbreak that I mentioned earlier. Ayahuasca is a heart medicine, and my heart wasn’t in it that evening. Had I been avoiding the act of surrender when I went straight to heaven and became God? Was it my ego protecting me from the real work that needed to be done?

My heart was heavy, empty, broken. Perhaps I created heaven in order to avoid going deep. It is possible for the ego to control a medicine experience if it wishes, but the medicines always know what you need. Had ayahuasca allowed me to play around for a little while in my bliss? To remember what it is like to be love, to be the creator, to dance and smile and feel ecstasy again? Perhaps, but I guess that wasn’t what this journey was supposed to be about.”