I was able to fully grasp my potential as savior of the collective human oversoul only very late and almost too late to avoid a permanent sense of guilt imposed by my personal integrity. In one of the summers of my youth as in the summers of the youths of many I began to experiment with substances not explicitly endorsed by either legal or moral authorities. These experiments amounted to no more than they do for people who are not either saviors of the collective human consciousness or else trained spiritual operators like a machinery driver who knows through long practice and certification the meaning of each of which, to the casual observer, appears to be a randomly placed and unfathomable lever, knob, button, switch, or indicator light.
After almost ten years of mostly recreational abuse of fungus, prescription drugs, and/or technically nonregulated but not approved for human consumption substances bearing a striking chemical resemblance to MDMA, I first noticed my ability to do more than watch the light shows, strikingly detailed hallucinations, and/or slight departures in my perceived reality.
There is a ride at Disneyland that involves riding in a small cart, which resembles an automobile, for a tour of a small area which resembles the real world. If you sit in the small fake car and ride through the small fake world you can simply enjoy the oddly proportioned, not quite right, colorful and softly rounded landscape with an attention to detail only hoped for by the artists who designed it for the sole purpose of attracting your attention to those details.
If you do by chance happen to grasp the small fake steering wheel you will notice a certain limited control of the direction taken by the small fake car, and if you depress the small fake accelerator pedal you will notice a certain limited control of the speed of the small fake car. However there is a very large, very real steel rail that runs underneath the small fake car and prevents your manipulations of the small fake controls from doing more than jarring you unnecessarily and distracting you from the small fake world.
However, if you consider the large real world and its rules as they apply to the small fake world, and become familiar enough with the small fake world and its large real rail, you can find the precise combination of attention to detail, small fake control manipulation, and large real rules, and derail the small fake car off of the large real rail and for as long as it takes the large real men who exercise small fake authority to detain you, you are free to drive your small fake car around the small fake world exactly as you please and to see the many details of the small fake world from angles and vistas that were never intended for your consumption by the artists who designed them.
Imagine that the small fake world is the typical hallucinogenic/dissociative experience and the large real rail is a set of inhibitions, taboos, and external controls. If you are a dick-waving shaman or a cloistered spinster your small fake controls may be more responsive, powerful, or otherwise useful, but mine are not.
Now imagine that you believe enough in your own importance and personal exceptionalism enough to attempt to evade the large real men and their small fake authority, and you drive your small fake car out of the small fake world, and into the large real world.
The large real world is the luminiferous ether and the large real SUVs, angry policemen, news choppers, businessmen, dogs, malarial mosquitos, picket fences, and world governments are the things that legitimately live and operate there. You are a crazy person driving a small fake car in the large real world.
As appropriate in this horribly extended metaphor, all of the things (hotdog vendors, ice machines, heterochromatic kittens, hardware license dongles) that live in the large real world are amused, shocked, outraged, and/or utterly ignorant of the shitbag junkie driving around a small fake car stolen from Disneyland, and respond in kind.