The Myth Of Unaltered States

Particles pulsing, swirling
In boundless expanse
Forms fleetingly shaped
Through mind’s ephemeral lens
Tenuously held
In an ever-shifting
State

Sleep
No world, no experience —
A void state

Dreams unfold
Worlds behind closed eyes —
Another state

Eyes open
Groggy under morning light —
State changes

Sounds flood
Urgency in head, stomach
Shifting state

Legs swing
Unsure on unsteady feet —
State shifts again

Gravity pulls
Heart races, muscles tense —
Yet another state

Steps taken
Alertness dawns
State of clarity

Bladder empties —
Relief floods in
A relieved state

Face seen
Affection in a smile
State of connection

Day’s thought
Dread of tasks ahead
An anxious state

Toe stubs
Pain, then gone
A transient state

Endless flow of states
Merging, shifting, fading —
Held together
By breath alone

Is life —
Experience —
Anything but
An unbroken chain
Of shifting states
Spun by heartbeat
Filtered through mind’s lens —
Construing — projecting —
The illusion of a fixed body

Can any being —
God or human
Know a state —
Unfiltered
Unconditioned —
By mind or body

Is the body
A vessel for states
Or is it itself
An unrelenting sequence
Of altered states —
Flow streaming through eyes, ears, skin
Constructing reality —
Transient and arbitrary

And if so
What becomes of
The fixation — far and wide
Striving endlessly
To attain and maintain
Some fixed phantom
Of a healthy state

What, then, is this myth —
Of an uninduced, unaltered state
Promoted by society’s priests —
Scientists, philosophers, doctors —
Preachers of clarity
Benchmarking every state
Against a persistent lie

Creating hierarchies —
Expanded, contracted
Mystical, mundane
Pleasure, pain —
Writing fictions
Normal, disordered
Stable, heretical —

Placing infinity beneath microscopes
Nitpicking it inch by inch
Labelling this altered
That unaltered —
Arbitrary distinctions
Of states

What would be an altered state
When there has never been
Nor can ever be
An unaltered state

Yet they persist —
These trusted arbiters
Perpetuating their fictions
Fully aware —
Every breath transforms
Every thought shifts
Yet hawking fixes
For what cannot be fixed

Objectifying the unowned
Condemning, incarcerating
Demonising, criminalising
Those who dare
Alter their state
These purveyors
Of sanctioned drugs
Remain licensed
Peddling falsity —
Fetish of a normal — stable state

So who maintains the lie
Who profits from the fraud
Who — would you indict —

When the entire machine
From king to commoner
Parents, teachers, neighbours, strangers
Are unwitting collaborators —
With researchers, taxonomists
Cartographers of mind
Evangelists — campaigners, advertisers
Mouthpieces and backers

When all —
Numbed and conditioned
Are wardens of perception
Regulators of experience —
Joined together
To uphold a flimsy
Absurd illusion

Punishing, violating, murdering
Themselves and others
To maintain mendacity
Gatekeeping — imprisoning
Perception itself

When everyone —

Is both prisoner
And the guard