psychedelic lit

I need to jot down what I felt while reading this genre of writing. For me, the psychedelic community in literature is more of a felt experience than something that is either theoretical or historical. It is true that there are some books that read differently than others; in these instances, the reader will go through various thoughts and images without a clear beginning or end. Rather, these books are sources of movement or displacement within an abstract mental space in which everything appears to be fluid, and reality is always changing.

The first time I started to become aware of this experience through literature was when I was entranced, hypnotised by certain passages, experiencing vividness and intensity beyond the normal bounds of my imagination. The nature of psychedelic literature is such that it creates a different mental space for the reader to inhabit, wherein thoughts, memories, and ideas will start to blend with other thoughts, memories, and ideas.

Psychedelic reading experience is more of its chaotic and intense nature, such as Fear and Displacement,Hunter S. Thompson said the same concept of fear and displacement in his gonzo style work;(for extrass do watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,1992).

A simple, more relatable one, which I discussed with my friends, is  Khasakkinte Itihasam. I sometimes feel like the landscape itself is alive with memories, myths, and thoughts.

This idea has always captivated my interest because there’s no limitation on how your imagination can travel. Reading the authors of psychedelic literature creates a feeling of flowing through many layers of thought, like layers of philosophy, culture, emotion, and imagination, all blending into one. The reading experience is generally more about experiencing a transformation in thought than it is about following the progression of a story through the framework of words on a page.

I feel psychedelic lit is a reminder of the power of curiosity. It reminds me that literature is not only a means of telling a story but also a means of altering one's perception of the world around them; when a page from a book opens layers in the mind, the world seems to become larger, stranger, and far more fascinating than it felt before.