Suffusion of Happiness

Many years ago I was hanging with some friends and someone brought over a new drug he wanted us to try, it went by the name of salvia divinorum, or the salve of the gods.

A few buddies tried it before I did, and lost coherency for a minute or two, looking around confusedly or giggling softly while staring into space. My experience was much more intense. About halfway through my third rip of the stuff in a 30 second space, energy erupted up through my spine. The energy had a character and a structure- that of pure laughter.

I entered a synaesthesic state where every sense was joined in experiencing this laughter- the world became composed of laughing mouths which I was laughing along with. The energy in my spine was the most powerful- it was like a solid column reverberating with universal mirth. The most significant aspect of the experience was the totality of it- every aspect of my being was laughing, I could think nothing, feel nothing, sense nothing apart from the laughter. And all aspects of the laughter- the spinal column, the laughing mouths, my own laughter, was in perfect synch, it was all the same laugh. Slowly, over a period of a minute or two, the laughing mouths resolved into the confused face of my friends that had been staring at me while I decended and returned from the extreme laugh state.

Anyway, I've come to view this experience as my body touching the primal plane of the universe- and that the energy of this plane flooded into my body. Like a pasta press, my body altered the flow of the energy to be capable of release through my own nadi exits, and it took the form of extreme mirth. I now find this experience spiritual, it showed me that the universal energy, when pushed through the human form, creates joy. Thus, anything that does not create joy is not connected to the universal energy, and does not lead to the divine.

Yogananda supports tapping into the universal mirth as a path to God on page 92 of "How to be Happy All the Time":

O Silent Laughter, smile thou through my soul. Let my soul smile through my heart, let my heart smile through my eyes. O Prince of Smiles, be enthroned beneath the canopy of my countenance, and I will protect Thy tender Self in the castle of my sincerity, so that no reble hypocrisy may lurk to destroy Thee. Make me a smile Millionaire, so that I may scatter Thy smile in sad hearts freely, everywhere!

He's talking about accessing the laughing energy that I blustered into whilist on drugs, only accessing it with finesse instead of ripping the door down and letting the flood in. To open one's spine and let a little of that laughter in, to keep in within the "canopy of my countenance", and then spread it around.