The only faith I had when I had my first spiritual experience was faith that there was no God, only science. At 17 I was a complete doubter, and actually had a long conversation with my brother the night before this one particular trip about how I was so sure that religion was developed to protect the weak from the strong. I figured that the weaker and smaller people made up religion so their butts wouldnít be kicked all the time. Ha!
The next day (April Fools day, 1978, my awakening day) we waited for a guy we knew to get home with a fresh batch of moonshiner LSD. When he arrived my brother and I split three hits, it was purple microdot.
We drove around for a while and picked up a friend who was hitchhiking that had just ate some too. We went down to elementary school nearby and lay down in the grass. At first the effect was a visual cartoon, like the Flinstones, I had never had this effect before and it was pretty neat. Everything looked like a cartoon. I started to have auditory hallucinations, soft fart noises, bubble noises, so on. This was the highest I had been till this time, I was very high indeed.
As I was laying there on the grass, I saw the trees around me kinda waving at me. I had one trip before where trees talked to me and told me they loved me. In that trip I saw feet on the bottoms of the trees, and they had eyes all over them. I wrote that trip off as a hallucination, but now it was happening again. So the trees started to communicate with me telepathically, again telling me that they loved me. I was in awe, and started to accept that they were actually communicating with me. They went on and began to rub their leaves together, when doing this a fine gold dust started to fall. It fell to me and covered me, I was covered in shining gold dust. Rainbows filled the sky, grass was reaching to touch me, it felt really neat.
Then, all of the sudden I realized that there is a God, a living spirit from the Earth, and it loved me. I couldn't understand that at all, I was so against religion that I was preaching atheism to all my friends. But this experience was so powerful that I was changed in a moment. I was being blessed by these trees, and they kept telling me how they loved me and would protect me. I would not have anything to fear as long as I knew that trees were my friends. They were so happy that I could hear them. I was blown away. Where I had NO faith, now I had an unshakable faith that never left me. What was strange to me was that evolution was one of the main reasons I hadn't believed in God, but the trees kinda explained how science is fact, but it fits in perfectly with God, it is God's thing. It is the church that is screwed up. I now could see how true this was. The trees were speaking for the Earth, and they were speaking directly to me. I was special to them, but they said we all are and that I was only lucky because I could hear them. They would be my friends forever, and now I have found that all plants and cacti are my friends.
So, faith may help in spiritual experiences, but it is definately not required. If the spirits find it appropiate, no faith in anything is needed. It was the LSD that opened my eyes, but the trees were the ones that taught me about spirituality. I've never had such vivid visual hallucinations like that since, and I wonder if the freshness of the acid was a factor. But whatever the reason, it changed my life within an hour. Trees have talked to me on occasions since, and other plants have too. In fact rocks and cliffs have spoke to me also. The Earth is alive, and I'm not sure if I can even say it's faith that I believe this is so, it's more like seeing is believing. No force on Earth could ever tell me itís not true. I Know better, and when trees speak to me I listen. Funny thing is they always have positive things to say. They DO love us all.
It was several years later I read that Indians talked with trees and thought it funny that white people couldn't hear them. Well, one white kid heard them in 1978 and never forgot what they said. They can be pretty convincing, sure are pretty too.
(American man aged 36)
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