What does it feel like?

Went to Udaipur recently, and right outside one of the temples we visited was a little shop boldly advertising thandai. Of course we had some. The guys chugged down two glasses each, but I'd heard terrible tales of what it can do to you, so stuck with one. That turned out to be a wise decision. The guys soon got violently ill while I meditated on the laws of the universe and ate the most delicious grapes I'd ever tasted.

A friend once asked me if I knew what it felt like and so I tried to formulate a reply. When this analogy occurred to me, I felt like I'd had a minor epiphany (one of several that day.) So here goes:

Think of your brain as a processor. It's got a flood of information rushing into it by the millisecond from all your five senses. So while it's processing what you're seeing, it's also simultaneously processing what you're feeling, smelling, tasting, hearing. Some of this is in the background, but these sensations are being processed nonetheless.

After some thandai, it's like four of your senses are switched off and your entire brain's focus is on one single sense. So whatever sensation you're experiencing is heightened beyond anything you've experienced before. While I ate grapes, I couldn't think beyond the luscious sweetness of them. Each grape felt like a watermelon exploding in my mouth, drenching it with sweetness.

The other thing is that because your brain isn't shuttling between 5 different senses in one second and is entirely focused on one sense, there's a feeling that time is stretched. So each moment lasts infinitely long.

It's beautiful.