THE EQUINOX
nobody else might be affected so.” This was said to me quite
frequently when, early in the hasheesh life, I enthusiastically
related the most singular phenomena of my fantasy.
But there is no such thing true of the hasheesh effects.
Just as inevitably as two men taking the same direction, and
equally favoured by Providence, will arrive at the same place,
will two persons of similar temperament come to the same
territory in hasheesh, see the same mysteries of their being,
and get the same hitherto unconceived facts. It is this
characteristic which, beyond all gainsaying, proves the definite
existence of the most wondrous of the hasheesh disclosed
states of mind. The realm of that stimulus is no vagary; it
as much exists as England. We are never so absurd as to
expect to see insane men by the dozen all holding to the same
hallucination without having had any communication with
each other.
As I said once previously, after my acquaintance with the
realm of witchery had become, probably, about as universal as
anybody’s, when I chanced to be called to take care of some
one making the experiment for the first time (and I always
was called), by the faintest word, often by a mere look, I could
tell exactly the place that my patient had reached, and treat
him accordingly. Many a time, by some expression which
other bystanders thought ineffably puerile, have I recognised
the landmark of a field of wonders wherein I have travelled in
perfect ravishment. I understood the symbolisation, which
they did not.
Though as perfectly conscious as in his natural state, and
capable of apprehending all outer realities without halluci-
nation, he still perceived every word which was spoken to him
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