Taking the ether

May 12
at the watering hole

May 12.

By taking the ether the other day I was convinced how far asunder a man could be separated from his senses. You are told that it will make you unconscious, but no one can imagine what it is to be unconscious until he has experienced it. 

How far removed from the state of consciousness and all that we call "this world"!  You are a sane mind without organs, - groping for organs.  You expand like a seed in the ground. You exist in your roots, like a tree in the winter. 

The value of the experiment is that it does give you experience of an interval as between one life and another, - a greater space than you ever travelled.

If you have an inclination to travel, take the ether; you go beyond the furthest star.

H. D . Thoreau, Journal, May 12, 1851

See January 26, 1856 (“When I took the ether my consciousness amounted to this: I put my finger on myself in order to keep the place, otherwise I should never have returned to this world.”)

By taking the ether the other day I was convinced how far asunder a man could be separated from his senses . You are told that it will make you unconscious , but no one can imagine what it is to be unconscious — how far removed from the state of consciousness and all that we call “ this world ” – until he has experienced it . The value of the experiment is that it does give you experience of an interval as between one life and another , – a greater space than you ever travelled . You are a sane mind without organs , – groping for organs , — which if it did not soon recover its old senses would get new ones . You expand like a seed in the ground . You exist in your roots , like a tree in the winter . If you have an inclination to travel , take the ether ; you go beyond the furthest star . 

It is not necessary for them to take ether , who in their sane and waking hours are ever translated by a thought ; nor for them to see with their hindheads , who some times see from their foreheads ; nor listen to the spirit ual knockings , who attend to the intimations of reason and conscience .