The curse of awareness

Long ago, men and beasts lived together in complete harmony with nature. The cycle of life flowed freely, taking lives and renewing them endlessly without intervention or observation from any creature.

One day, a man, or a woman, ingested a type of mushroom that are today described as consciousness-expanding. In their minds, an explosion occurred: the ability to see meaning, however blurred, beyond the raw sense-data that continuously feeds the senses, to perceive patterns, and to distinguish between the self and the thing observed. It must have been an incredibly powerful trip. The memory of these experiences remained with them while they were sober, and they sought to recreate them, first by ingesting more mushrooms. Later, when the memory became strong enough, they were able to apply the same mental processes at other times too. Slowly, they started discovering everything around them and in themselves. But in doing so, they forgot the original, unaware state that they had been living all along, of which they had never been aware to begin with.

That's how we fell from heaven. We are compelled to higher and higher levels of awareness, maybe hoping that someday the cycle will loop and bring us back to the heavenly state.