Many years ago (more than twelve, less than 26), I had an experience that led to an altered state of consciousness, as reported in a previous blog entry ("A Different State of Consciousness"). Ever since then I have been hoping to repeat the experience. Some aspects would be very difficult to recreate, such as the panhandler's request for a very specific amount of money (I think $13 and some change) for railroad fare to someplace in Connecticut where he had an acting job waiting, which I think opened me up to a state of intentional suspension of disbelief. However, the following activity, wandering through mostly unfamiliar streets while keeping as open as possible to whatever came seemed reproducible, and I hoped to achieve that. I had been warned, however, by friends who were more familiar with questions of different mental states, that such an attempt, if successful, could result in serious disorientation, such that I shouldn't attempt it alone, so I decided to ask a friend to accompany me as a "monitor."
In the meantime I read and reread Terry Dowling's Rynemonn, and noticed a similarity between what I was planning to do and what Dowling describes there as "doing the line." This involves going to a very lonely spot, letting a sense of the location soak in, and then heading out in some direction, open to whatever comes and accepting any resulting experience as meaningful. The most obvious difference here is that Dowling's proposed activity is that his takes place in an area of empty desert and my original experience was in Manhattan's financial district and any follow-up would be in an area of similar population density. However, here I found support in another Rynemonn section, a story entitled "The Maiden Death," in which his hero, Tom, walks down a street he had always before bypassed, first from happenstance and later from habit. So I recruited a friend, consulted a map for a nearby residential area in which I had never walked, and headed out.
I walked long enough to get a very mild sense of disorientation, losing my sense of North and South, but that was all. I think the two problems were (1) that there were no other people around, so nothing "happened" (as for example, someone asking directions) and (2) the fact of the monitor himself, preventing a sense of vulnerability. Maybe it will work another time.