In the blog post Between the One and the Many I elaborated a cosmic scheme with the One at the centre (the Sun), the Twelve at the periphery (the Earth) and Three and Seven between. Here I would like to relate these four numbers (1, 3, 7, 12) to levels of psychedelic altitude, with the One as the highest and the Twelve at the lowest.
Although I refer to planet Earth as 12 (representing cyclical time in the yearly orbit around the Sun), this is in the context of the collective unconscious, the imaginal or heaven. Everything that happens in the psychedelic dimension happens in heaven. The “12th heaven” is the lowest heaven. It designates a realm of personal and transpersonal images, ideas, fantasies, etc. similar to those that occur in ordinary dreams, or rather “big dreams” as Jung called them.
Get higher, beyond the “12th heaven”, and you’ll find yourself in “7th heaven”. This is where you experience one or more of the seven levels of the Ray of Creation (Emptiness, Energy, Matter, Life, Mind, Planet, Universe). If you are on the level of Matter (Atum), for example, you may experience dancing atoms and molecules, the elementals (air, water, earth and fire) and other natural forces. The level of Life (Ka) is experienced as cellular “organic goo”, whereas the Mind (Ba) level is populated by myriad organisms, plants and animals, or rather their souls/consciousness.
Beyond the “7th heaven” is the “3rd heaven” which is an abstract realm of primitive archetypes arranged into triads. The two primary ways these triads manifest is objectively as Tao, Yin, Yang (a dynamic polarity within a higher unity) or subjectively as Parashiva, Shiva, Shakti (consciousness and form within a higher consciousness). You either observe reality from a detached perspective as the endless play of infinite triads or participate in reality and experience it from within as the infinite play of one foundational triad. In the Christian context, the latter is experienced as interpenetrating dynamic relationships between the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The “1st heaven” is absolute unity, plenum void, one without a second. In other words, God (or Godhead). This is very difficult to recall in consciousness, and only possible to remember at all because a trace remainder of self manages to steal a glimpse of the unfathomable Source and Goal of everything before being swallowed up like a firefly in the Sun. Talk of “ego dissolution” and “amnesia” often, but not always, refer to the “1st heaven”. You know you’ve been there, but you don’t know where you’ve been.
I would like to say that this is the highest level, if only for the sake of tidiness. However, I suspect that it may be possible that on the other side of God, so to speak, something like on the far side of a Black Hole, there is another dimension altogether. Perhaps “God” is the portal between this reality and a another parallel universe where the DMT entities live. Perhaps.
Be that as it may, I do think that this is a useful map with which to position various psychedelic ecosystems. Broadly speaking, I would say that the conventional therapeutic secular humanist community focuses mostly on the “12th heaven”. Their primary interest is in processing and healing personal, interpersonal and even transpersonal pathologies and traumas. New Age Neo-Pagan Hippies spend most of their time in “7th heaven”, especially in Atum, Ka, Ba and Gaia. Christian mystics, as well as mystics from other traditions, get as high as “3rd heaven” (e.g. St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 12:2), and sometimes “1st heaven” (e.g. Meister Eckhart).
bread of life 