The Blackberry Walk

From a young age I, like many others, have had an interest in altered states of consciousness. In childhood spinning around in circles until you're dizzy, and watching the world spin around you is quite a lot of fun; and it is an altered state of consciousness. You may think such childish antics couldn't be an altered state, like one used in worship, but it was in The Sudan, where the Whirling Dervishes as they were known span furiously as part of their religious rituals. Drugs, like mescaline and cannabis, have been used to achieve altered states across time also. Mescaline by Meso-Americans who used cacti like Peyote to commune with demons gods; and cannabinoid residues have been found on altars across both the Aryan and Semitic spheres. Many speculate also the use of LSA, a molecule similar to LSD found in morning glory seeds, to be an ingredient of the mystical drink Soma repeatedly referenced in the Rig Veda. I have been interested in altered states for some time. But whilst they are an extreme example of a consciousness shift, drugs are only one peripheral way of achieving an altered state. Anyone who has attempted fasting knows how radically your thought patterns and mind change; and likewise, anyone who has felt true satiety - the glorious feeling of a full belly after a Christmas roast - knows that this too is a potent altered state. Each day we pass through these altered states, as the circadian cycle of the body's own drugs, hormones, rise and fall from dawn till dusk. There is no one state of basic consciousness. What you'll find, once enough attention is paid, is rather a continuing transition of states. That said, despite these many smaller changes we experience across the day, with little effort there is still room for us to affect radical adjustments in consciousness. I remember in Japan visiting an onsen, soaking in hot mineral waters, and feeling so rested, relaxed, and somnolent, I hardly had the vigour to stand up. The hot, healing waters of the onsen have a great affect on consciousness; and it was with this in mind that I was eager in Oslo to try a sauna. The concept, I thought, was similar: the hot liquid water of the onsen was to be exchanged for the hot gaseous water of the sauna. And the effect too, I thought, would be similar. Why would steam produce so different an altered state of consciousness to hot water? I walked across Oslo harbour, past the funny opera house you can walk up, expecting as much from my sauna experience. We arrived at this pontoon-looking pier fixed solidly, jutting out into the sea; and from this pier branched small wooden sheds, each housing a different sauna. First though, we had to change. There were two, each with a sign in English only - for the Norwegians this would of course be common knowledge - reading 'Unisex Changing Rooms'. As an Englishman, this made me just a tad squeamish. The done thing, my good friend told me, was to wrap your towel around you and change into your swimming trunks beneath your towel. This was tricky. Especially when later leaving the sauna; because the use of the sauna was time-slotted, everyone was leaving at once; and, it's harder to change when wet than when dry. Then it was time to enter the sauna. The first shed we entered was full, so we found another which was less full and entered. We passed through the anteroom with a little tap and the firewood, and opened the steam-up glass door into the sauna proper. My first thought was that it reminded me of the Eden project in Cornwall, and the blast you felt entering the humid jungle dome. Then we found a place to sit, made ourselves comfortable, and put on pensive faces. For seating, there were two tiers. The first tier of bench was both seating and foot space for a second tier of bench seating, shaped in a staircase formation. And in the corner of the room, where the benches faced, was a log fire, the stone the fire heated, and a chimney. And so we sat. At first I thought it wasn't really affecting me, I wasn't feeling much in the way of changes to the senses, and I felt quite normal. Then my hand brushed past my thigh, and it felt uncomfortably slippery; I looked at my hand and it was glistening, slick with sweat. I felt the rest of my body, and it was all over. Normally sweat from running, say, beads up and drips, but this sweat did not, opting instead to coat my body in a full liquid layer. People left, people entered; but whenever a Norwegian entered, particularly then men, they brought with them another quartered log to throw on the fire. They never looked to see or feel if the fire needed more fuel, they just kept stoking it all the hotter. But the fire isn't what heats you in the sauna: it's the water. Periodically, people splashed a paddle of water onto the hot stones, and a cloud of steam, felt not seen, choked the room. It wasn't my body that suffered, but rather my face. Each time the steam plume erupted from the stones, it was too much for my face which I rubbed and covered with my hands for protection. After about 10-15 mins in the sauna, it was time for my first cold crash. We left the sauna into the cool Norse September air - warmer than England at the time, mind - and then walked down a metal ladder into the sea. From 90°C to 15°C in a moment. But not as shocking as I expected. Yes, there's the bit where your bits touch the water, then the point where you're neck-deep, hyperventilating, but after the heat of the sauna, your body craves the cold crash, like glowing-hot steel quenched in oil. This pattern of 10-15 mins in the sauna followed by a cold crash is repeated over and over, until the constant annealing, heating and quenching work out the impurities of your body. There is a true Sargasso calm after the sauna. Those ever-present anxieties and nagging inadequacies - which I hope I'm not the only one to have - subside, and the overcast sky (which I'm reliably informed in Norwegian is 'obershit') breaks, revealing the sun. My opening ramble about altered states of consciousness must seem plucked from a different article at this point, but I do want to return to it presently. As I said, going in I had every expectation the steam of the sauna would affect me like the hot water of the onsen. But it didn't . The water of the onsen left me peaceful, puffy-headed, googy-eyed, so contented and calmed my muscles felt no need to act. To quote the Japanese expression, 'Gokuraku, Gokuraku.' Compared to being the human tea-bag of the onsen, the hot mocha steam of the sauna made me alert and vigilant. Wired, I stared forth like an icon of a wide-eyed saint (except, of course, for my corpulence, setting me apart also as a foreigner in a land of health addicts), enjoying and enduring the sweat and the blasts of steam from each ladle of water. Then the cold crash in the sea, unlike the alert of the cold shower after a hot bath, was totally disorienting. I stumbled from the sea cross-eyed and dizzy, as if I were a new organism having just evolved from the sea, and this was my first time on dry land. The experience was somehow opposite to my expectation. After my time at the sauna, I began to think. Norwegian culture is crafted by the sauna. The poise and inner calm I felt after the sauna, you can see everywhere in Norwegian society. The friend I was staying with, originally a Brit now living in Norway, said one of the hardest parts of Norwegian culture to become accustomed to was the awkward silences. Silences us Englishmen feel the need to fill in a group continue uninterrupted in, say, dining halls, and no one feels anxious to break the silence with chatter. And I, sitting in my proverbial armchair, believe it is because of the sauna that the Norse are like this - or at least part of the reason. These continued altered states gradually change how we view the world, just as altered states found through prayer transform our souls, and whole nations and cultures can be shaped and crafted by these outer habits and inner experiences. The sauna may not seem 'spiritual' - that ever-nebulous word - but being spiritual isn't a pre-requisite for changing the spirit. The spirit is altered every day through altered states, every time we fast or feast, every time we jog or bathe, or every time we pray or sin. We train ourselves through these altered states, and insofar as we're trained, so too is our culture at large. These traditions and customs shape the clay of each of us; we are the product of our rites. And over my time in Norway, I developed a real fondness for the country and their rites. Despite the eye-watering £10 pints, there is a Norwegian lifestyle and, for lack of a better word, Gestalt, a structure of being, of living, which I found both convincing and appealing. From England with love; and hopefully my next trip won't be so far away.